Dave Templeman

I am glad you had the opportunity to teach me some programming, although I believe I am not a textbook example for Gen Ys. I do not believe this experience was written about correctly.

Also, I don’t know if it is simply because of gender prejudices among teachers, as Christie suggests, but for some reason this does seem to be a much larger problem among intelligent females than intelligent males. I wonder if it has anything to do with what parents expect from their children as well. For instance, I think there can be more pressure for females to get good grades than males since boys are often excused by the “boys will be boys” phenomenon, making it perfectly acceptable for them to excel in sports instead of in school. While this might seem to have the opposite effect, I think this can make girls more results-driven and more likely to focus on completing assignments (which most would agree are not problem-solving oriented) instead of learning the material/exploring the world around them. I also think fathers may be less likely to joke around with daughters/use sarcasm when speaking with them; both of which I believe help to develop a more critical mindset, where you not only must listen to authoritative figures but process and analyze what they said and decide for yourself if it makes sense based on your past experiences with them. Whatever the cause of the general problem, and the intensity of it among females, I think nothing is being done to correct the problem by our education standards.

The article implies that people with a “growth” mindset are always very hard-working and eager to take on a challenge, and people with a “fixed” mindset are always lazy and unwilling to face challenges.

This essentially blames the “fixed” mindset for an abundance of lazy and complacent kids.

I don’t believe that the “fixed mindset” is the reason kids don’t do their work or study hard. The primary reason kids don’t do their work is because they don’t care about learning in general. There are plenty of “growth”-leaning thinkers out there who acknowledge that they have the power to learn as much or as little as they please, and still choose not to learn.

Also, I know quite a few people who lean towards a “fixed” mindset, but still study very hard in school because they don’t think of studying as making them smarter, they think of it as a means to uncover more of their natural ability.

The reason the results of the study were so extreme (growth mindset tried harder, faced setbacks better; fixed mindsets didn’t try as hard, gave up) can be attributed to the very young age of those who were studied (Kindergarten and 5th grade). Children often see things only in “black and white;” seeing the “gray” of an issue is a skill that is developed with age.

So if we’re looking to solve Gen-Y’s apathy problem, glamorizing learning and education is where we must start. We have to make learning “cool” again. How to do this, I don’t know, but until learning isn’t a dirty word on a high school campus, the mindsets of the students are irrelevant.