September 9, 2019
2. Throughout Dweck’s TED Talk and Lukianoff and Haidt’s Atlantic article they all dive deeper into problems on campus surrounding education and the development of learning.I believe that people are too concerned about others feelings and offending them rather than focusing on the need for development for children to prepare them for their professional and future life and that the way someone succeeds or doesn’t is based off of what they choose to do with the tools they are provided with to succeed. If you have a growth mindset you are always trying to better yourself and open to a challenge, if you have a fixed mindset you’re not going to learn anything because you’re stuck in a pattern and setting yourself up for failure. What you put into your education is what you will get out of it no matter what the approach is to learning in higher education it’s up to the student on whether they want to accept it or not.
3. Dweck, Lukianoff, and Haidt all agree that there is an issue to the approach of learning in higher education. In Dweck’s TED Talk she discusses Growth and Fixed Mindsets and how students with Growth Mindsets are more likely to improve in their education rather than those with a Fixed Mindset. She argues that instead of praising a child for their intelligence or talent we should start praising their process kids engage in, their effort, and their improvement to create kids who are hardy and resilient and are apt to have a Growth Mindset.
In Dweck’s TED Talk she discusses the differences between having a Growth and Fixed mindset and comparing how each side learns based upon these mindsets. Growth Mindsets “love a challenge” and understand that their “ideas can be developed” whereas Fixed Mindsets find anything different from what they are used to to be “tragic, catastrophic” and set themselves up for failure rather than trying to figure out a different way to learn or solve a problem. Similarly, Michael Roth’s “The Difference Between Coddling and ‘Safe Spaces’” discusses the overprotectiveness or “coddling” of students and how this can lead to Growth or Fixed Mindsets. “Instead of teaching young people to find resources in themselves to deal with chagrin and anxiety, some schools offer handholding.” This shows students that there are no consequences and that they don’t have to challenge themselves. If students had to learn the hard way and figure out ways to deal with tough situations on their own they’d be more apt to challenge themselves in the future and display a Growth Mindset.
