In her extraordinary book, Mindset, Dr. Carol S. Dweck presents research that, hopefully, will change the course of parenting and education.
…telling children they’re smart…made them feel dumber and act dumber.
Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., Mindset, p.74
In one of her research studies, conducted with hundreds of mostly early adolescent students, she:
… gave each student a set of ten fairly difficult problems from a non-verbal IQ test. They mostly did well on these and when they were finished we praised them.
We praise some of the students for their ability. They were told: ‘Wow, you got [say] eight right. That’s a really good score. You must be smart at this …
