This article is a few years old but has been gaining speed again lately as part of the ongoing conversation about education and our kids. In it, Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorsen discusses the ways that we treat young children and how that might have an affect on their career choices and success later in life. Its worth reading in full, but heres an important excerpt: She found that bright girls, when given something to learn that was particularly foreign or complex, were quick to give up--and the higher the girls IQ, the more likely they were to throw in the towel. In fact, the straight-A girls showed the most helpless responses. Bright boys, on the other hand, saw the difficult material as a challenge, and found it energizing. They were more likely to redouble their efforts, rather than give up. Why does this happen? What makes smart girls more vulnerable, and less confident, when they should be the most confident kids in the room? At the 5th grade level, girls routinely outperform boys in every subject, including math and science. So there were no differences between these boys and girls in ability, nor in past history of success. The only difference was how bright boys and girls interpreted difficulty--what it meant to them when material seemed hard to learn. Bright girls were much quicker to doubt their ability, to lose confidence, and to become less effective learners as a result. Researchers have uncovered the reason for this difference in how difficulty is interpreted, and it is simply this: more often than not, bright girls believe that their abilities are innate and unchangeable, while bright boys believe that they can develop ability through effort and practice. What do you think?
Posted on: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 07:00:00 +0000
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