After watching Carol Dweck's "The Power of Believing
That You Can Improve", there is nothing that I can say I can agree with. A
HUGE problem with our society now a days is the "need" to coddle
those who don't perform as well as others. It starts at an early age when
everyone gets participation trophies and there are no losers in a game.
Everyone is told that they are a winner. This is completely asinine. As a
child, when my brother or I had a sporting event and the coaches told us that
we all won my parents quickly set us straight and told us how it was. They
didn't sugar coat anything, they didn't feel the need to coddle us. My parents
would keep track of the score themselves so they could tell my brother and I
what really happened. Not everyone is a winner, not everyone is going to be
smart, and not everyone is going to be successful. That is the way of life and
people need to accept it.
When kids have everything sugar coated for them they don't
develop a good work ethic and they certainly won’t have what it takes to make
it in the real world. If you take a child and tell them they are always a
winner, they didn't fail they just don't have what it takes "yet",
and that there is always going to be a reward for effort they will be set up
for failure. The whole point of school is to educate our youth to one day
become functioning members of this society. If they don't know what it's like
to fail at least once, to lose at least once, then they will not become a
functioning member of society. How is that child going to react the first time
his boss later on in life rips him a new one for not completing a task. When
you're an adult you don't get rewarded for showing up. You don't get rewarded
for putting forth effort. You don't even get rewarded for doing a job correctly
in a timely manner. You simply do it because it is expected of you and it is
your job.
I’m very lucky to have the parents that I do. The way I was
raised shaped me into the person I am today. I owe everything to my parents; my
work ethic, my competitive drive, and my desire to always do and be better. A
lot of my friends growing up didn’t have parents like me. They had parents that
always told them they were winners and if they didn’t do well on something it wasn’t
their fault. It was their teachers or coaches’ fault and all that matters is
all the hard work they put into whatever they did. To this day as juniors in
college mommy and daddy still baby them, and I can tell you that all those kids
are going nowhere in life. In life you don’t get a trophy just for showing up.
If you want to be successful you have to work your butt off for it, and even
then you don’t always get what you want.
I think you have misunderstood Carol Dweck's message, Kristin, since you are reacting here to a kind of self-esteem thing (everyone's a winner, sugarcoating everything) which has nothing to do with the growth mindset idea. Just the opposite: Dweck is saying that labeling IS the problem, the label 'winner' is just as limiting as the label 'loser.' Instead of letting people get an A and say they are done (easy A, hard A, whatever - any kind of fixed label that says you are done, says you are a winner, defines you in some fixed way), Dweck says you have to keep going. Don't stop because you got an A and feel all proud of yourself, don't stop because you got a C and feel all depressed: keep going, no matter who you are and what you can do, because you can always do more. You seem to have missed the point there somehow in your comments. It's not about winning or losing and calling the game done. The game is never done, there's always another challenge, and anybody who stops for whatever reason (labeling themselves a winner, labeling themselves a loser) will end up being short-changed because they stop challenging themselves to do more. It sounds like the vocabulary of winning and losing is very important to you, but Carol Dweck's argument is that the most important competition is with yourself, and in that competition it's all about finding the next challenge and being brave enough to face it, not accepting the superficial label of "winner" or "loser" which can both hold you back from doing MORE. :-)
ReplyDeleteI have to agree about your points about sugarcoating things as you grow up. My parents were the same way. I couldn't figure out why everyone was getting an award in high school, especially for such asinine things.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I agree with Ms. Gibbs that you might have misunderstood the message. It's trying to say that everyone needs to work hard. You may never be the best at something, but if you work hard enough, you may succeed. You just never give up on that, at least if it's something that you really want to do.