The passage focuses on the different standpoints of cultures on mistakes and stupidity. As the passage begins, the author starts off with the observations of psychologists, Harold Stevenson and James Stigler, when they compared elementary schools in the U.S., China, and Japan. As they were observing a Japanese boy struggle with a drawing assignment, they saw how Japanese and American culture perceives mistakes. The psychologists felt “anxious and embarrassed for him”, however the boy’s classmates did not feel that way. As the boy eventually mastered the problem, his classmates did not discourage him, but congratulated him. Additionally, they found that Asians find math success “as a matter of persistence and plain hard work.” In other words, …show more content…
Moreover, the authors discuss how American children are not allowed to continuously make mistakes in order to improve and are made to see mistakes as a sign of stupidity. Thus, it has made children or adults to fear failure, for it is believed that mistakes reflect on their capabilities. The passage then transitions to the research with American school children by psychologist Carol Dweck, which is said to have “pinpointed one of the major reasons for the cultural differences that Stevenson and Stigler observed.” In her experiments, she found that children who are commended for their efforts eventually perform better, are more likely to regard mistakes and criticism as useful information that will help them improve, and like what they are learning more than children who are praised by their natural abilities. However, children who are praised for their natural ability focus more on how competent on how they look to other than what they are learning, and become defensive about not doing well or about making mistakes and implants a self-defeating cycle in their minds. Dweck has thus tried to change how Americans view mistakes by changing her students’ perceptions of
Part two of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell address the Impact of culture on one's actions. Gladwell uses these chapters to depict different circumstances and the cultures legacy or norms have affects their lives and futures. While in part one Gladwell looked at multiplet individuals, chapter two looked more at groups. According to Gladwell what are the reasons asian excel mathematics? Discuss the cultural and educational differences that he points to as explanation.
He appeals to pathos as he explains the stereotype of “Asians being good at math.” He starts by explaining how rice farming works, appealing to pathos and logos, saying how difficult and time consuming the farming is, and how farmers must work diligently to make sure everything goes as planned. He skips ahead and relates that diligence with modern math. switching to ethos, he mentions a study done by an international group of educators. “...the average number of items answered on that questionnaire varies from country to country…
The message that Carol Dweck conveys is the power of the words ‘Not Yet’. According yo Dweck, the grade ‘not yet’ gave the students the understanding that they were on a learning curve. After learning about this, Carol Dweck conducted some experiments of her own. She went to a school and gave students a test that was meant to be difficult for them. Students that passed has shown to have a growth mindset, and those who failed had a fixed mindset. Those who failed felt as though their intelligence was put to the ultimate test. When asked what they would do during another complex test, most said that they would just give up and cheat. This proves that once students receive a failing grade, they lose the motivation to learn from their mistakes
In this stage, children enter school, and their teacher becomes an important figure in their lives. During this stage, the child’s peer group, such as their classmates, becomes much more significant, and the child begins to feel the need to win approval by displaying typical abilities that society constructs. If the child is encouraged in their initiative attempts, they develop a stronger sense of confidence in their ability to achieve set goals, but if the child is unable to develop the set skill, they begin to feel inferior.
In the essay “I Just Wanna Be Average,” Mike Rose explains how the failure of students is all revolved around the teachers, when the fault should be put on everybody.
The general argument made by author Alix Spiegel in his work, How Eastern and Western Cultures Tackle Learning, is that children often tend to give up too easily. More specifically, Alix argues that for the most part in american culture, intellectual struggle in schoolchildren is seen as an indicator of weakness, while in Eastern Cultures, it is not only tolerated but is sometimes used to measure emotional strength. He writes, “They have taught them that struggling can be a good thing.” In this passage, Alix is suggesting that if struggle indicates weakness, it makes people feel bad, and so they are less likely to put up with it. But if struggle indicated strength, people would be more willing to accept it. In conclusion, Alix’s belief
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
Several tests of research were conducted on students of the two different grade levels, elementary and middle school. Two University students, Lisa Blackwell of Columbia University, and Kali H. Trzesniewski from Stanford University conducted research to observe that once the work became difficult, and the grading became a lot harder to please, how their grades were going to be affected. Parents or guardians accustomed their children to compliments on their intellect,
Hence, after we look at all these case studies, we could conclude that the students’ academic performance is clearly tied to teacher’s expectation. In other words, the students who were deemed as “better” or “good” ends up achieving better also due to the higher expectation that the teacher was giving to them. These result, especially Rosenthal and Jacobson’s, demonstrated extremely powerful self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of the teacher. This is because when a teacher forms certain expectations towards their students based on whatever characteristics
Does Failure Lead to Success? In the article “In Praise of the F Word” by Marry Sherry,Sherry argues for the need to be able to fail students. Sherry argues for the threat of failure as a means of motivation for students. A controversial issue of “In Praise of the F Word” has been flunking students.
‘recognition that your performance can be improved is accepting that whatever does (or does not) happen in the classroom is in the hands of the teacher’ (2009, p.104)
The general argument made by Alix Spiegel in his work, “Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning,” is that every culture as a whole has their own special ways of learning and thinking. He demonstrates various ways that cultures, such as the Eastern and Western, experience struggles throughout their years in the classroom. More specifically, Spiegel argues not only about how these two different cultures experience struggles, but also about how they are viewed.
In this passage Leonid Fridman uses comparison and contrast to display one countries values to another and how they are messed up. The author states how, "in East Asia, a kid who studies hard is lauded and held up as an example to other students", but in America that is not the case. Leonid Fridman expresses how the anti-intellectual values that pervade our society must be fought.
In “The Trouble with Talent”, Kathy Seal, who frequently writes about children and education in magazines, wrote about the way of education in the U.S. which only focused on the value of inborn aptitude could breed children to become artful people and waste many of American children’s potential. At the beginning of this article, Seal told about an experiment of Jim Stigler, who was a UCLA psychologist, which tested the persistence of Japanese and American children by solving the math problem. While the American kids solved the problem for a short time and quickly gave up, the Japanese kids still kept on their work. Stigler stated that Asian education focused to
Whenever a child makes a negative remark about him/her self, I try to encourage to rephrase it to a positive one, so that he/she can form the habit of being positive about him/her self. Again, ‘praise’ is preferable to ‘negative’ remarks