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Analysis Of The Secret To Raising Smart Kids

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“The Secret to Raising Smart Kids” by Carol S. Dweck is about the development of a child’s mentality when it comes to their self-confidence as well their capability of learning and working hard. Dweck informs the reader that there are two types of children and people in general when it comes to learning as well as growing. One group are the helpless people and one group are those with a growth mindset. Whether a person falls into the helpless or those willing to grow greatly impacts their success as well as their future. As humans surrounded by other humans, with lots of opinions, we begin to develop a self-concept, thoughts about ourselves and who we are, at an early age. Part of that self-concept consists of our belief of how capable we …show more content…

To make sense of such a concept he provides the reader with a couple examples. First with one of a child named Jacob who is incredibly smart and able to complete everything easily in his younger years. His family and those surrounding him always complimented his “smarts” which boosted his ego however since he never had to work very hard he continued the lack of hard work that he was praised for. As he grew older and was forced into more difficult courses it didn’t come to him as easy therefore he stopped receiving the praise he desired and eventually lost interest in school. Since everything came to him without effort he was never forced to learn how to problem solve or overcome challenges. He felt incapable of getting over and working on the challenge and just quit instead. Jacob’s story and experiences helped her prove her ideas.
To further prove that we should praise children on their hard work rather than just telling them they’re smart, Dwek and her colleagues performed an in-class experiment. The experiment consisted of splitting a group of ninety-one seventh graders. They specifically chose students with low math grades in their sixth-grade year of school. Roughly half solely focused on just study skills and tips while the other learned the same study skills as well as learning about the growth mindset and the connections neurons make as we

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