Benedict Carey “grew up believing that learning was all self-discipline: a hard lonely climb up the sheer rock face of knowledge to where smart people lived” (2014, p.x.) Numerous second grade students I encounter have a belief that is considerably more disconcerting. Attaining only the tender age of 7 or 8 they have surmised that their ability to learn is set in stone and that they are either able or unable to learn and that smart people typically live outside their low-income community. Additionally, they are tasked with assuming ownership of their learning, as they are required to engage in sustained periods of independent work. This is seemingly futile for someone that does not believe their learning is something for them to possess.
Dweck’s ‘The Growth Mindset’ postulates that if a student’s intelligence is something that can be improved thru hard work and being challenged, he (she) will only get smarter. And too, she proposes adopting new strategies to learning if effort and challenges fail to work. In Wes Moore’s book The Other Wes Moore, Wes Moore (the Rhodes
Society believes there are two types of people, when it comes to dexterity.There are those who have the knowledge and skills necessary for academics. And then there are those who seem to be full of information about life itself, but do not appear to have perception, when it comes to school. I define “Book smart” as someone who is intelligent and well educated academically. For example a straight A student, or a person who can in a heart beat, give you an answer about history, english, math, or science. On the other hand, a person who is considered “street smart” is one who is dull in school, but has a very bright mentality about life itself and common sense. In Hidden Intellectualism, from They Say I Say, Gerald Graff tells us about how he considered himself “street smart,” but unintentionally became quite an intellectual over time. Using a topic that interests a student is a better way of persuading them to learn, and help them discover they are intelligent in their own way. We should not classify things into different judgmental groups, there is hidden intellectualism amongst every person although we all experience it differently based on past exposures.
After reading Gerald’s story, I think students will believe in themselves more than ever before. Gerald showed us that book smarts doesn’t just mean doing well in school but that things you do in everyday life is showing your own intellectualism. He also states how once students and children realize that if they can argue and talk about things that are important to them or that they are passionate about then they can hopefully use that to tap into things they are leaning about in school.
In “Hidden Intellectualism”, Gerald Graff argues that street smart kids can do better in school if teachers had gave them the opportunity to perform their intelligence on academic work. It will be helpful if school encouraged students to learn the subject they are interested in. Graff share his adolescent experience to support this argument. He was passionate about sport. Until entered college, he only read things about sports. This habit unwittingly developed his literacy, analyzing and debate skills. In the neighborhood he grew up, to maintain the class boundary between upper class and lower class, it was better to be book smart. However, he was struggle about whether to be intelligent or not. Because he wanted to be smart and impress the
Most of the world plays the role of a student at least once in their lives. We are taught and expected to learn, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that anything is actually learned and stored in our memories. Majority of times people learn enough just to get by; just to get that perfect grade or perfect score. The difference between a learner and a student is that a learner takes that next step and starts learning outside of the classroom, and starts focusing on knowledge, instead of what grade they are going to get. In his book, Becoming a Learner: Realizing the Opportunity of Education, Matthew Sanders explains and defends the importance of transitioning from a student to a learner.
In the feature article “Brainology”, the author, Carol Dweck explains that there are consequences of praising children for their work, they is also different types of mindsets that enable a person’s development. She focuses on two types of mindsets. The first mindset is fixed where a person believes that if she or he is smart, they don’t need to put effort to be successful. The author explains on page 3 of the article that sometimes society encourages this mindset by using words such as smart , intelligent which sometimes creates confidence , however, when the assignment gets difficult then a fixed mindset person loses confidence so they stop working hard to complete the task. The second mindset is when a person believes that working hard to
Motivation, something everyone can have and create. In the story “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes Charlie works very hard to become smart. Daniel Keyes says “Then Dr Nemur nodded he said all right maybe your right. We will use Charlie. When he said that I got so excited I jumped up and shook his hand for being so good to me. I told him thank you doc you wont be sorry for giving me a second chance. And I mean it like I told him. After the opershun Im gonna try to be smart. Im gonna try awful hard.” (page 287). This quote shows Charlie putting in a great deal of effort to become smart and didn’t get much or even any credit for it. “Miss Kinnian teaches me to spell better. She says look at a word and close your eyes and say it over and over until you remember. I have lots of truble with through that you say threw and enough and tough that you don’t say enew
We love and encourage parents to take total responsibility for their children’s education in whatever way is best for their children. Not all kids are the same, some learn at faster pace and some learn completely different than the other.
I nearly use all of the information and skills I learn in my everyday life. Soon that will form my character as an adult. It is clear that school is a means of learning but multiple children do not believe that they will use most of the knowledge they gain from this source. Numerous people do not know how to use school knowledge in everyday life. A knowledge that can help me in everyday life would be Critical Thinking. “Critical Thinking skills teach a variety of skills that can be applied to any situation in life that calls for reflection, analysis and planning”(What) said S. M. Rayhanul Islam. Since I use this concept in school, I have already prepared myself in this area for adulthood but I still have an abundance of knowledge yet to learn. In the article, School Knowledge and Its Relevance to Everyday Life in Rural Western Kenya it states, “School knowledge is believed to transform and change children and the status of the educated person draws its importance from the relevance of education in everyday life” (School).This quote shows that students that behave a certain way in school will probably use that same concept after they graduate from high school. How far they will go in life will depend on the way they act. As many people say knowledge is power. Those students that pay attention to lecture and use their gained knowledge as resources to do more will probably be better off in life than if it was the other way around. I use this mindset in my everyday school life. This is the main way in getting into that right track, to get educated. It causes students to have lots of experience so when they are set free on their own, they will at least have some type of knowledge which they can build themselves from. This is the reason why I am doing volunteer work and scholarships -- in hopes of getting into different environments to experience life besides school. I will use
Carol Dweck categorized students into two different types of learning based of their mindsets. First group are students with the Fixed Mindset. Fixed mindset students are students who believe in looking smart rather than becoming smarter. These students believe in three things; one mistakes are set back, two, don’t work had and three, if you make a mistake don’t fix it. The other mindset is the growth mindset, these students “believe that their abilities can be developed, and so their major goal is to learn”. The three things these students focus on are; one take on challenges, two work hard, and three confront mistakes and correct them. Growing up all the way from the start of school, until the beginning of college, I would consider myself
Plass). Before that the J.H. Plass says, “Learning-to-learn means that you open yourself to discovering the unknown, experiences and then actually become able to do something with it” (J.H. Plass) which I agree with wholeheartedly. Most students go to school, sit in class, go home, do their homework, and study for the test; they are at school to get a good grade and move on and are just learning for the sake of learning. As soon as students take a test they forget the information because all they care about it memorizing facts and getting an A. However, this is not what school and knowledge should be all about. Students should want to learn to better enrich themselves and to pursue their dreams because we are always learning and as the author states, “The honest thief does not stop learning after he hangs his diplomas nicely framed behind his desk. He remains a student for life. This is what he has learned” (J.H. Plass). Everyone should be taught that getting a good grade is not everything, school is not just about your class rank, and education and learning-to-learn should not be taken for granted as well
“One of the most powerful ways to engage students is to let them take charge of their own learning.” Eric Jensen author of Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids’ Brains and What Schools Can Do about It
Chapters 6-8 in How We Learn was an interesting read. Carey presented a list of influential psychologists and researchers (2014). My first key question is based on the reading of Karl Duncker and Norman Maier. Maier and Duncker emphasize that incubation happens mentally, jolting people to create solutions (Carey, 2014, p. 123). Although they’ve bought light to incubation, a question addressing the how still hasn’t been answered (Carey, 2014). Carey provides an example of a person at a stadium in a life-changing situation with two guards and a hungry lion (2014). The person is forced with a tough decision, to differentiate which guard is truthful and which one is not (Carey, 2014). The dilemma is labeled as a “famous problem in math logic” however, the problem does not involve mathematics (Carey, 2014). The example could cause one to ponder for minutes, perhaps
The awareness of knowing what learning styles are effective and ineffective, shaping learning styles for particular circumstances, knowing one’s prior knowledge state, and effective strategies for retrieval and thinking in context are essential for students to have when it comes to learning (Ormrod p. 348). For students this could be a complex process, which is shown to be uncommon. When failing to recognize incompetence, as learners, students are unfamiliar with ways to play material into context, lacking the ability to draw on prior knowledge, or even critically question what they have read. This failure to realize their own abilities, can be improved by not only improving metacognitive skills but all building upon skills that gear towards self-regulated learning, which vary from goal setting, self-motivation, self- evaluation, to self-reflection (p. 351). Since poor performers are more likely to be unaware of their lack when it comes to metacognitive skills. Knowing one’s lack of competence can improve even with studying, students can know and identify places of weakness and know where to spend more time when it comes to certain
The way in which a student is able to advance through the process of learning can be complicated by several aspects which characterize each student. Individual differences such as gender, motivation, socioeconomic status, personal beliefs, and disabilities all determine the ways in which a student will move through each stage of learning or how long it will take to master a skill. Furthermore, each student’s cognitive ability and performance can determine at which rate he or she will excel from the developmental stage of learning. Manning and Baruth (2009) suggest rather than assume that learners can succeed by trying hard or doing more homework; educators should understand that development and readiness, not effort alone, affect what students can learn.