Posted on 02/14/2007 10:56:17 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
How Not to Talk to Your Kids
The Inverse Power of Praise.
By Po Bronson
(Photo: Phillip Toledano; styling by Marie Blomquist for I Group; prop styling by Anne Koch; hair by Kristan Serafino for L'Oreal Professionnel; makeup by Viktorija Bowers for City Artists; clothing by Petit Bateau [shirt and pants])
What do we make of a boy like Thomas?
Thomas (his middle name) is a fifth-grader at the highly competitive P.S. 334, the Anderson School on West 84th. Slim as they get, Thomas recently had his long sandy-blond hair cut short to look like the new James Bond (he took a photo of Daniel Craig to the barber). Unlike Bond, he prefers a uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of one of his heroes: Frank Zappa. Thomas hangs out with five friends from the Anderson School. They are “the smart kids.” Thomas’s one of them, and he likes belonging.
Since Thomas could walk, he has heard constantly that he’s smart. Not just from his parents but from any adult who has come in contact with this precocious child. When he applied to Anderson for kindergarten, his intelligence was statistically confirmed. The school is reserved for the top one percent of all applicants, and an IQ test is required. Thomas didn’t just score in the top one percent. He scored in the top one percent of the top one percent.
But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says.
(Excerpt) Read more at nymag.com ...
Three dacades wasted by "progressive education."
Thanks for the post. I sent it to all of my kids, 3/4 were in gifted programs. I asked for their input. It will be interesting to see what they have to say.
Fantastic article - bump!
No Child Left Behind, means the gifted must wait...
They improved their study habits and grades. In a single semester, Blackwell reversed the students’ longtime trend of decreasing math grades.
The only difference between the control group and the test group were two lessons, a total of 50 minutes spent teaching not math but a single idea: that the brain is a muscle. Giving it a harder workout makes you smarter.That alone improved their math scores.
These are 7-12 grades in a life science school WHO DON"T KNOW THIS?
I heard a story about a well-known computer scientist, who was a prodigy. In his teens, he took a college class on quantum mechanics, and he struggled and his grade was "not excellent." He suddenly lost interest in physics all together, feeling that he could not cut it in physics. So he went into an "easier discipline," computer science, and created a powerful text-editing program called "emacs."
I learned about this story from a guy whose kid was a prodigy and enrolled in advanced college physics class. The instructor was a friend of the "emacs" guy and then a reputable physicist. He emphatically told the kid not to fold on physics even if his grade does not come out all right.
This also happens a lot among students in so-called first-class college. If they cannot handle a class of certain field easily, it won't take much time for them to give it up altogether and look for another field where he/she can be a "smashing success."
Believe me. Some kids do not hesitate to fold if they cannot come up with an answer in a blink.
bump for later
Good post and interesting article.
News flash: common sense rediscovered by social scientists.
This is a fantastic article. Well worth reading all the way through and pondering.
The results of the experiments were amazing.
Yes, and how many screwed up children who are now screwed up adults. I don't like children being used as guinea pigs.
PING
I think that is good advice if you are not on a scholarship or other support that requires that you maintain a high GPA. But if you are trying to keep a scholarship that has that type of GPA requirement, then continuing to take classes that endanger your means of support may not be the wisest course in my opinion.
I didn't read the entire article yet, but it sounded like everyone in this kid's early life was afraid to tell this kid to DO HIS WORK AND DO IT NOW.
So he's brilliant, that doesn't make up for dedication and hard work. Character training was in order.
he was several years ahead of his age. He was enrolled in an expensive prep-school. Money was not the problem for him or his parents. His professor knew it, too.
The professor was just worried that some kid in mid-teens fold because he takes advanced physics class and does not get A+.
Getting B+ is a resounding success in this case.
Even in the hypothetical case of this kid getting a scholarship, I doubt that any sponsor is canceling his financial aid because he got B+.
And keep at it even if you have a setback once in a while.
If? If?? You mean when! :D
True, and if not, then why not. That 'crisis' of discovering there may be courses that you just can't get an A in, or just can't quite master is possibly the most valuable lesson a bright kid could learn. How to "fail" and how to "fail" gracefully. And when you are bright, there are "A's" and then there are "various shades of failure."
That was me. Not nearly as bright as the kids described in the article - I'd never make it on Jeapordy or into any truly exclusive ivy league school. But as a reasonably smart kid in a tiny school in a tiny town, with no real perspective on such matters it is easy to develop delusions of grandeur. That first B in college was a *crisis.* I was completely unprepared with adequate study skills. They simply weren't needed in my cakewalk high school. Therefore any program challenging enough to make these kids run the risk of not getting an A might teach them that there is more to life - and more required to live in the real world - than an untarnished GPA.
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