Raymond Law

I just read The Secret to Raising Smart Kids. It defines two mind sets of human:

1. Fixed
2. Growth

The fixed mind-set learners are helpless, whereas the growth mind-set learners are mastery-oriented. The former class thinks intelligence and IQ are fixed, thus cannot be changed or improved. The latter class thinks success only comes from efforts and persistence.

It is a very positive way of thinking for one’s own successes and failures during his lifetime. We succeed because we try hard, and we fail because we did not try hard enough.

I absolutely agree. Every successful and famous person we know succeeds because they try hard. Nobody gets rich by sitting his own ass on the couch and watching TV all day. Money do not drop from the sky.

I have to also add that you have to learn to love what you are learning/doing. You have to be passionate and care about learning and success. Passion is the enabler. However, we can’t love everything we encounter in life. What if a student is truly passionate about math, but not biology? Should he focus all his efforts in math and totally ignore biology and end up with an A in math and a F in biology?

The way I look at it is our education system does not allow focused learning, which is sad. It encourages broad learning, which tries to make every student equal and evaluate them using the same metrics. Only when schools start to help students focus on what they are most passionate about, the growth mind-set can be fostered, and the fixed mind-set eliminated. A student good at math is getting the growth mind-set mentality from the math class while getting the fixed mind-set from the biology class. The two mentalities contradict and the student is left doubting which mind-set is correct.

Just want to rant about the education system in our society…