Once we get to school, we are continuously assessed. If you get good grades – well done, congrats, you are smart. If you don’t – you are left with a feeling that you are a failure, not smart enough, a looser. Pretty much black or white, no other options. But there is one more option, which can shift our focus from getting a good grade per se to actually learning.
“…if you get the grade “Not Yet” you understand that you’re on a learning curve. It gives you a path into the future”.
Says Dr Dweck in her TED talk. Again, we are coming back to the growth vs fixed mindset discussion here.
In short, people with a fixed mindset operate using a focus of “Now”, and those with the growth mindset operate using the idea of “Not Yet”. “Not yet” basically means that you can improve if you put more effort and try other strategies. You are learning and just haven’t mastered something YET.
The problem here is that the current education system often puts children into a fixed mindset. And the majority of children (and parents) are more worried about their grades (NOW) than if they are learning (NOT YET).
Dr Dweck shares an interesting study, where her team of researchers created an online math game, which rewarded effort, strategy and progress (YET). They’ve asked thousands of kids to play this game and guess what? Their mindsets changed:
“Just the words “yet” or “not yet,” we’re finding, give kids greater confidence, give them a path into the future that creates greater persistence… In one study, we taught them that every time they push out of their comfort zone to learn something new and difficult, the neurons in their brain can form new, stronger connections, and over time they can get smarter. Look what happened: in this study, students who were not taught this growth mindset continued to show declining grades over this difficult school transition, but those who were taught this lesson showed a sharp rebound in their grades. We have shown this now, this kind of improvement, with thousands and thousands of kids, especially struggling students”
Sounds so simple and so powerful. “Yet” and “Not yet”.
Now when I’m reflecting on my school experience, I recall a fantastic math teacher at one of my schools. Math was never easy for me, so I had to work really hard to get good grades. Often, when I failed a test, she would put a big dot (technically, NOT YET) instead of F and say: “I know you could do better. Go back home to study, and let’s try again tomorrow after school”. And that’s what I did (but firstly – crying and thinking that I’m just crap at math, fixed mindset drawbacks I guess :)).
However, the majority of teachers at my school were not that comfortable with that “big dot”. Instead, they were quite happy to put big red F. And that hurt ☺ especially, on the way home where I expected to have an unpleasant conversation with my parents. But most of the times my mum had a Growth mindset perspective on the failure: “that means that you have to study harder. So get back to the book, try again and ask the teacher tomorrow if you could fix that F somehow”. +1 for proactivity as well ☺ Loads of teachers were surprised, but pretty much everyone offered me one more chance!
So to conclude, we can’t change the education system (yet I guess), but parenting matters a lot from the mindset perspective.
Question for you for today – what is your attitude towards yours and your children’s failures? Are you raising your kids for NOW instead of YET? Think about it. Let’s all use the super power of YET and shift towards the growth mindset!
Loads of love,
Irina (& Dawid :))
