Re:What it means to teach gifted learners well
by amatecha on Thursday January 20, 2022 @02:54AM
(#30006043)
Seriously. The constant praise and expectation that I'm "soooo smart" was terrible ego-bolstering and false-confidence-building I didn't need or want. I have a lifelong problem with taking on challenges that I might not succeed at or easily crush, even as I near the age of 40. I've had to work REALLY hard to suppress my instinct to avoid failure and just face challenges head-on. It's seriously a constant battle.
That said, nothing could have changed the fact that during my entire childhood, I saw everyone around me struggling with (or not breezing through) things I found super easy, and I got very used to finding everything easy. I had extremely few opportunities to fail, relative to anyone else around me. If something was hard, I basically just wouldn't do it. That's nothing to do with praise, and unfortunately a much harder issue to even spot, let alone mitigate.
After thinking about what I've just written here, I feel like the praise issue is like the surface-level problem but the "only knows how to succeed" is a deeper and probably more-important issue to look out for.
That said, nothing could have changed the fact that during my entire childhood, I saw everyone around me struggling with (or not breezing through) things I found super easy, and I got very used to finding everything easy. I had extremely few opportunities to fail, relative to anyone else around me. If something was hard, I basically just wouldn't do it. That's nothing to do with praise, and unfortunately a much harder issue to even spot, let alone mitigate.
After thinking about what I've just written here, I feel like the praise issue is like the surface-level problem but the "only knows how to succeed" is a deeper and probably more-important issue to look out for.