When I was in elementary school, I was apparently on the borderline of the test scores that would put me in the "gifted" program, and my mom just decided to have me stay in the normal track. She shared with me at the time that I apparently wasn't that smart, just worked really hard.
I love how many crazy smart people have stories that are similar, yet odd. I both had something like Kotsko's #1 and almost got tossed into the BEH class. And still ended up kinda lazy.
Haven't finished reading yet, but I like the fact that for the mock photo they had to have a profession hair stylist, makeup artist, and fashion consultant to make the kid look appropriately rumpled. There's a credit for his pants when his pants aren't even in the picture.
Also, isn't Reed college filled with people exactly as described? Nothing more interesting than writing about people like yourself.
Hey! I'm the one who does the New York Magazine blogging around here!
That does it. I'm putting up a picture of Jessica Biel's ass.
"crazy, smart". stupid omitted punctuation.
And yes, this is exactly me. My wife gets mad at me because when she asks me a riddle I either get it right away or I give up and don't bother. One from the other day- name 10 body parts that have 3 letters. I came up with several that weren't on the "approved" list (ass, this was a riddle for elementary kids) so I said it was dumb and wouldn't try any more.
The kid's hero is Frank Zappa.
How many fifth-graders do you suppose are Zappa fans?
I thank my mom every day for telling me my only gift was hard work. Now I realize that anything is possible for me, due to my implacable stick-to-it-iveness.
It's great to be able to sneer, "I've wasted more potential than you'll ever have" at almost everyone on the planet and not be lying.
Is this why my wife gets furious with me for refusing to take classes that might actually make me learn math?
Best line in the article: Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, a Harvard social psychologist who is an expert in stereotyping, told me, "Carol Dweck is a flat-out genius..."
Well, hell, now Carol's gonna slack off.
Oh, man. I worry about this, because I was the classic overpraised smart kid who doesn't work at all. I must go home and beat my children now.
But seriously... If you were praised for effort, and then asked to do something that was harder, you'd automatically have to work harder to do the harder task and get more praise. If you're smart, you'd do what's easier, right???
OK, maybe not that serious.
13: Same here. And I did push my kids to try hard stuff rather than just coast on what came easy. It worked.
11: Exactly!
Reed College has a policy of not praising students. Not a joke. If a student seems very (suicidally)unhappy, they might try to cheer them up a little.
13: Yeah, me too. And I'm just lazier than hell.
The whole thing seems simple-minded, as though there were some parents who only praised natural intelligence and others who only praised effort.
I totally agree that people with too much self esteem are sociopaths and should be destroyed. The nice thing about relationships is that they destroy so much self-esteem. I guess I'm pro-relationship after all. Relationships are sort of like pestivores, keeping the world clean and tidy and free of icky self-esteem. Forget I ever said anything.
I'm dumb and lazy. Twofer!
19: It's so, so hard not to make a crack about Southerners in response to that. But I'm a better person than that. (And also, too lazy to figure out how to phrase it!)
Don't worry. You'd end up involving a semi-colon and some proper composition somewhere in it and I'd just get confused anyway.
You know, I bet a lot of unfogged regulars are smart people with work-avoidance issues.
Second draft of 21: Speak up, lady, I can't hear you over my own saliva hitting the spittoon.
I was praised for my intelligence and shamed for my work ethic, viz., I was bright, so if I scored a mere 99% on an exam, it must have been because I wasn't paying attention/was careless/thought I didn't need to work/was an egomaniac.
It's never easy to realize that if you have children, you are going to screw them up.
Jews aren't smart, they just work hard. Or so I've heard.
If my parents hadn't told me, when I was a kid, that I was smart, I would have had more success with the young ladies.
"It's never easy to realize that if you have children, you are going to screw them up."
I'm pretty much resigned to it.
To put it differently, the article seems to be oriented toward parents and teachers who are raising kids out of a book and just want to know that they have the right book. And some of them have a "Praise Effort" book, and some of them have a "Praise Ability" book. And they're all worried because, "What if I'm using the wrong book, and all the other moms are using the right book!!!?"
22: Actually, I'm an idiot with an overdeveloped work ethic. (And no, I'm not kidding. Everyone I know and/or am married to? Much, much smarter...but when midnight rolls around, they're asleep, whilst I'm busy reading Gadamer.)
I was praised for being smart and it was pretty clear that smart meant not having to work hard. On the one hand, this meant my parents didn't care about my grades, which is good. On the other, yup: lazy and anxious.
I promise to stop telling PK he's smart.
Yeah, wow, what self-recognition. I thought I was entitled to find all of public school too easy to try at.
27 - Maybe your parents shouldn't have told you that you were so good with the ladies.
I was bright, so if I scored a mere 99% on an exam, it must have been because I wasn't paying attention/was careless/thought I didn't need to work/was an egomaniac.
Yep. The thing about that is that it's literally a no win situation. Perfection isn't any particular achievement, because you should have been able to do it effortlessly. Imperfection, on the other hand, is shameful evidence of poor character. Bleah. (I responded to this by resoundingly rejecting the concept of perfection, and dreading report cards with a sick horror.)
You people make me sick. I've mentioned this before (scroll down to #12), but I wasn't ever considered "smart," and with good reason.
I'm not lazy so much as insubordinate....I
I definitely felt that I shouldn't have to work hard in school but I don't think my parents were actually the source of that.
34 - Yeah, they should have told him he was really trying hard with the ladies.
35 - In 2001 or so Duke released a report on various issues in the undergrad female population. The only thing I remember about it was the term "effortless perfection" - the idea that women were supposed to be hot, get good grades, be at the right parties, etc, all without breaking a sweat.
There may be a tad of selection bias for smart-and-lazy operating, what with this being a site known for its fractal-like comment threads.
On the contrary, heebie, if they had told me I was good with the ladies, right now I'd be dating ScarJo.
38 - This explains the awesome NBA careers of Trajan Langdon, Danny Ferry, and J.J. Redick.
My parents were actually quite careful not to praise me for being smart, so I don't have this to the extent that a lot of people do, but I do seem to have picked some of it up somewhere. I'm definitely inclined to expend little effort on most things, but on the other hand I can be very persistent at others. Odd.
I was praised for both my hard work and my intellience, and I think in the short run the combination worked--I tried ridiculously challenging things, to the point of really needlessly destroying my GPA in college. But in the long run I think this effect still played out--is still playing out. So yeah, thanks for the pain, ogged.
Ben - you're awesome with the ladies. Just amazing. Now go hit on ScarJo. Just be relentless. And be sure to give us updates.
I'm really surprised the article doesn't mention Alfie Kohn (does it?), whose book Punished by Rewards is far and away the most readable, straightforward treatment of this issue.
My experience was similar to BPhD in 31. I was praised for being smart, although more by teachers than family, and I knew I didn't have to work hard, so I was borderline lazy. And my parents didn't stress about my exam results.
Something that really bit me on the arse when I first went to university and studied a subject where I couldn't wing it or bullshit it. Which I dropped, and switched to philosophy, which is winging it and bullshitting in it's purest form.
God, I can't even read this thread.
I saw that article. The most interesting part is when the author had difficulty not praising his kids for being smart. I think it is true that praising your kids for being smart is like praising yourself. I am going to try to cut that out and praise my kids for being hard working.
"ScarJo"?
Absolutely, Ben. Go for it. Chicks dig that sort of thing.
48 - because you recieved too much praise as a child?
Wow, yes, me.
My parents decided when I was in middle school that it was probably a bad idea to keep calling me smart, so they stopped (and tried to do a little damage control: "you're not that smart, you know".)
However, this sort of backfired, since I just became incredibly insecure instead. A funny example of this is the time my guidance counselor called me into his office during my junior year to talk to me about my PSAT scores. He began by asking me how I thought I did on the test. I assumed this was the lead-in to telling me I did so poorly, they were going to kick me out of all my AP classes (really, I swear). Turns out, he was trying to tell me that I was a National Merit semi-finalist.
Scarlett is a second-generation atheist (as is Natalie Portman), so you can craft a pickup line from that. But you have to be a suave atheist, not a dorky atheist.
I was abused by the Gesell Institute of Human Development as a child: They told my parents I was both smart and lacking in perseverance - the latter because I refused to go on counting pennies, having noticed that every time I counted them, the tester would add one more. I did offer to count up as high as I could; at 3, I was much more amenable than I am now.
What did this result in? Praise for my smarts? Oooooh, no, that was just a given, not worthy of commendation. Instead, the question was 'Why did you only get an A and not an A+?' [Because the teacher doesn't give an A+?] All my young life, I was told that a) I have no stick-to-it-iveness; b) I could always do better [no, 110% doesn't actually exist]; and c) perfection would never be enough. [Poor Cala will be me in 30 years.]
In college, I discovered boys, grass and sex, in that order, after which I gave up my aspiration to get my PhD by the time I was 21, and settled down to a modest life of desperate over-achievement, wherein I would still rather have sex than write a paper on conceits in the works of George Herbert [the 17th century Welsh poet, not Bushdaddy].
Well, now I know...sob that I belong at Unfogged. Smart, lazy, insecure? Yep.
That's why I'm a secretary, actually. I can be a good secretary without trying very hard. Competition freaks me out and makes me either go for the kill or fail abyssmally, so I can't learn new things unless it is true both that I have both some kind of (very low key) incentive and that there is no competition at all. Which is why I've learned HTML, a little Java, InDesign, PhotoShop, Illustrator and a bunch of other fancy stuff as a secretary but could never have learned it in an actual class or in a fancy-pants job.
See, in my family we believed that being Smart was part of being Good--it wasn't a virtue, exactly, because we were born with it, but it definitely defined us as and Set Us Apart. So anything that suggested that one was not smart--like difficult school work--had either to be attacked and triumphed over or hidden from view.
Christ, what a depressing article/thread. Maybe I should get back to that paper that might keep me from being kicked out of grad school ...
48: JM, Frowner may belong, but we obviously don't. Quick, to the Work Ethic!
P.S. n0 G3n1U535 aLL0w3d
55: From PZ Myers, a link to Darwinian pick-up lines for the suave atheist.
I had to do well in HS to pay for college, but I rejected the notion of praise for performance in about 3rd grade, when I started doing my math assignments in bases other than ten.
I was continually told by my mother that I was so intelligent, everything was just going to work out for me without me trying very hard at all. It is one of the things I hold strongly against her. Even today if I let drop that something good is happening in my life her response will be along the lines of, Well naturally -- after all you're too smart not to succeed at whatever you put your hand to.
59: Take note, SEK, that it was a sob of despair about belonging.
Okay, I just noticed the byline on the story... and given that it's Po Bronson, now I'm looking at it distrustfully.
There are suave atheists?
We call ourselves agnostics.
The school called my parents in to talk them into skipping me three grades. my parents settled on two, based on emotional and physical development issues. My father picked me up after school, we sat in the driveway, and the ex marine boxer truckdriver cried like a baby. I was I don't know 2nd grade. 10? (Maybe he was crying because he couldn't afford special ed, or was just unsure)
The high point of my life, everything went downhill from there.
Okayz, so heres I am in fifth grade at 4 foot high or whatever pulling A's of course, and my math teacher holds me after class one day. And Mr Miller who is only a foot or so taller than me gets real close and says:"McManus, you are going to be a bum."
And I am silent and look him in the eye and wonder why does this weasel hate me so? He fucking hates me. And he did.
As far as being a bum, I was "whatever".
When I look back on myself as a child, I can't help but notice that I was a complete sucker. When teachers treated me badly, I was very confused--they were adults, and adults could not be wrong or cruel, unless they were in a book--and I readily internalized what they told me. A couple of my teachers really did dislike me and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, spanieling 'round trying to be liked. Only by teachers, though--I figured that children were pretty much a lost cause.
I really envy people with childhood narratives of rebellion and cynicism, since I was such a frabjous ass as a child.
Therap began in 7th grade. Lots of usual broken family blue collar bullshit.
Woulda been valedictorian. Had it locked. But in my junior year there was this criminal activity I got away with and the three teachers closest to me slapped D's on me. Just to get my attention. The classwork was fine, A's on the tests, report card comes there are three D's. When I shrugged it off they blackballed for honors and scholarships.
Ended 10 out of 550. I was robbed.
this criminal activity I got away with
Apparently not completely.
The title of this post has made me laugh several times today.
No surprises, the article resonates with me too.
But what's so bad about coasting through life, getting the average prize for less-than-average energy expenditure? Isn't (one of) America's sin its work-a-holism? Aren't we supposed to emulate those slacker Europeans, what with their "holiday" and "30-hour work week"? Not that these questions are extremely relevant for an obsessed student of Teh Maths, but a body wants to know!
So ya know I'm sacking groceries for a year and everybody's screaming at about what am I gonna do with my life and I say:"Whatever"
So the rich uncle hands me a $3000 check and says:"Go to college," So I go to college. And I am in the dorm and the 2nd day I walk across the hall to the sophomore and I says:"Where can I get some acid?"
"Went to college" 5 more times after that. Everybody always trying to get me into college, and I say:"Sure. Whatever." Never had any trouble with the classwork, cept for transcendentals. Never could tell tangent from cosine, for some reason.
I always was a bad person.
The more I think about it (and read the comments here), the more I start to think my own experience really was different in interesting ways. My parents actively discouraged the kind of perfectionism a lot of people's parents seem to have imbued in them--my mom used to frequently tell me the perfect was the enemy of the good--so I think I have less of that kind of neurosis than a lot of other people who were in similar positions as kids. I do still have some, though, and I'm not really sure where it came from. Teachers? Maybe; they did seem impressed with me, but I don't recall much overt praise. Maybe in my case it doesn't have to do with praise at all but rather with some other psychological issues. I do feel a tension between my ambition and desire to take on challenges (which is quite strong), and my inherent laziness (which may actually just be laziness, and not fear of failure). I have a tendency to take on big projects then struggle to finish them. My thesis, which has languished un-worked-on for weeks, is a prime example.
Well, what lurks unaddressed in this thread and the linked article is the idea that the normal, correct state of affairs is one in which we are free from neurosis and joyfully find fulfillment by working hard; the way we actually are is a fallen state which occurred because we, our parents or our teachers did the wrong thing. I mean, a reasonable number of people really do have horrible childhoods and end up with an unreasonable number of tormenting neuroses, but I feel like I had a childhood with a lot of good moments and ended up with neuroses with which I am happy. I could be a smidge less tormented and a lot less lazy, but it's not as if I'm out mugging people for money to buy cough syrup with which to drink away the voices in my head.
I guess what I'm trying to say is...well, actually, I guess I'm falling back on an argument I don't really believe, which is that there is a "natural" degree of human laziness and that's okay.
Actually, I don't believe that. I am opposed to the "natural" and feel that humans are more interesting when warped into odd psychic shapes. Madness and deformity for all, I say!
77: Damn you. Here we are, wallowing in out smartness and our laziness and out praise-gluttedness, and you have to come in and toss a cold bucket of "wake up, whiners" on our collective heads.
BTW, me too -- "Such a smart boy" incessantly, lazy as the day is long, so-so young adulthood, but now insanely happy.
Oh, and what Frowner said.
cough syrup with which to drink away the voices in my head.
That totally doesn't work, by the way.
80: Says you. Goat-birth-watcher. Speeder. Sickie!
The problems is that there are two types of people that will identify with this image -- those that are smart and lazy, and those that are smart and work hard but always think they should be working harder than they are.
Mostly I don't identify with this image. I feel like this is close to my experience, but different enough that it doesn't seem like a good description. But, as I've alluded to before, to the extent I see myself in this description, I don't know into which of those two categories I fall.
79: But don't you find it a relief that it's not "natural" to find joyful fulfillment in very hard work? I mean, that whole joy-through-strength thing is so offensively, depressingly late-nineties dot-com bubble, overpriced-loft, decline-of-Wicker-Park that I can hardly stand it.
But don't you find it a relief that it's not "natural" to find joyful fulfillment in very hard work?
I would if I believed it. Instead, I'm wracked with guilt and self-loathing.
I'm a big believer in the path of least resistance.
84: You know, some cough syrup would quiet your personal demons very nicely.
I myself oscillate between "smug self-satisfaction" and "guilty self-loathing". Occasionally I teeter for a moment on healthful perspective...I was poised there when I wrote 77. Now I'm headed for self-loathing again, but the pendulum is swinging rapidly tonight, so watch out.
86: I've found Moon Pies and Yoohoo much more effective than cough syrup.
Irish whiskey and blog comments work some.
The story of my life:I've been happy. :)
Always been a pot of coffee, a pack of cigarettes, and a stack of books. 2 hots & a cot. I was fine.
It is all those other people, start a stockroom job and the boss says:"Son, I gonna make you a manager. How bout night school?" Bob:"Whatever."
And then the stress, and then the drugs, and the boss saying:"Well, darn I tried to give the boy a chance."
And I run out the rent with the coffee & and the books.
Could I have cured cancer or written the great American novel? Fuck no. I feel guilty and resentful about all those motherfuckers with good lives who wanted to fuck with mine. I didn't fit their fucking idea of the world, I was a reflection, a disturbing commentary on their achievements and worth.
Fuck, the drugfiends wanted me to run dealer rings. Fuck em all.
A cheap Spanish red and crunchy foods!
Er, 90 was in response to 88, not Bob's personal narrative.
The article seems to track my experience and that makes me suspicious. I was praised for intelligence all the time by my parents while growing more and more risk averse as math got more complicated. It's so very seductive to blame math failures on my parents unwittingly loving me into stupidity.
Yet I know that I still tried other difficult and novel things in other academic areas. And so I wonder if my turn to "lazy" student had at least as much to do with not wanting to be one of "the smart kids". The kids whose life and death IS actually the grades. The serious kind of smart kid. I never understood, even as child, how other children could be so serious about everything.
Basically, I'm trying to credit my "lazy but smart" on personal autonomy and my choices. Not my parents. Blaming them seems too much like blaming the victim(s)?
I received so much praise and so little pushing when I was young that I've always assumed that I'm right, and it's always baffled me when people don't agree. I've been pretty successful in competitive situations which catch my interest, but I never found a career. So I'm a guiltfree underachiever (though angry about other things).
It was really hard on my dad, but hardly seemed to bother my mom at all.
When I was born they looked at me and said
"What a good boy, what a smart boy, what a strong boy"
And when you were born they looked at you and said
"What a good girl, what a smart girl, what a pretty girl"
We've got these chains hanging around our necks
People want to strangle us with them before we take our first breath
Afraid of change, afraid of staying the same
When temptation calls, we just look away
I really think that the bourgeois -- the word is correctly used here -- insistence on success limits people tremendously and produces extraordinary bitterness both among those successful under duress and among those who are unsuccessful. A lot of doctors wanted to be something else instead.
And, no, I'm not embarrassed to be quoting barenaked ladies lyrics.
Here's something that makes me suspicious about that article. The sentiment that I most identify with is the idea of not trying things that one could accomplish because of a fear of failure.
But I don't think fear of failure is always at a maximum in areas that you think you should be good at. For me one of the things that I have been most reluctant to try is singing or playing music because I know what it looks like when done well (most of my family members are amateur musicians) and I know how long it would take to become good at it so I don't start. But I have no expectation thats something I would be good at but I am still disuaded from starting by the fear of failure and distaste for being bad at it.
I think my sentiments are basically in line with NickS's.
Though I'm not really suspicious of the article overall, I just don't think it's really applicable to my experience.
I'm taking this thread to 100 -- by myself if I have to.
I agree with 95 completely.
I think one of the most tempting fantasies for smart people (for anyone really, but I suspect smart people are more prone) is the idea of a formula to maximize one's talents.
"Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising."
As soon as one is labeled as having potential there is the spectre of squandered potential.
But the fact of matter is that it's incredibly difficult to maximize ones potential no matter what that potential is.
There were two comments that strike me as related from this Yglesias basketball thread.
"People as pathologically competitive as Jordan or Bird would be insufferable in real life. I don't know if they actually *are* that way in their lives outside of basketball (or even if they are that way now that they have executive management roles in basketball), but what they channeled into basketball was something unhealthy that spilled into other arenas . . ."
"Most human beings even in high-performance jobs do not have the mental makeup to be maniacally devoted with every ounce of energy, day in, day out. . . . I'd like to see a reality show about a day's work for a CEO of a major corporation, or even a U.S. senator. If their lives were televised we'd likely find them dogging it as much as Amaechi did."
I am, slightly, playing Devil's Advocate here, I am someone that both wishes I was less lazy than I am, and thinks that a certain amount of laziness is necessary to human happiness and am torn between those two things.
95:I always could handle some stress, I impressed with the multitasking. Some have called me charming & disarming. It is the people I can't stand. :)
Sometimes I think about talent. We overestimate, way overestimate intelligence and way underestimate talent. Talent for math, talent for music, for talking, listening, reading, writing, housecleaning, childraising, empathy, objectivity...all those things considered learned attributes have struck me as more likely genetic. We are supposed to be good at some of these, all of us. But we are not.
I think talent can be weird. It is not just finding what you love, I think you can hate your talent.
The one thing that most struck home for me, reading the article, is that I have always had a tendency to resist praise. There is part of me that, when told I'm smart, thinks that the person telling me that isn't a good judge. I do believe that I'm smart, but I don't trust other people's judgement of that fact.
Sometimes I am quite conscious of a barrier that I have, and of letting more praise flow through it when I am feeling insecure and needing praise (and, inevitably, being dissapointed at how little praise one can find when one really needs it) and keeping almost all of it out at other times.
So, in light of the article, is this a good coping mechanism or just hyper-neurotic? I've thought the latter in the past, but this might make me rethink that.
Similarly, I have all of my struggles with fear of failure and resisting situations in which I might reveal myself to be not as talented as I think the people around me would like (and who doesn't feel that way some of the time). But I also resist situations in which a success would be absolute proof of my talent.
It is very important for me to both believe that I am smart, and that there are smarter people in the world, and I resist situations that would challenge either of those beliefs. Not that I literally mean that there is any situation that would make me think that I am the smartest person in the world, but it is important to my psychologically to believe that most people are competant at what they do, so I don't want to pry too much.
Damn, 101 rings completely true. This part in particular:
It is very important for me to both believe that I am smart, and that there are smarter people in the world, and I resist situations that would challenge either of those beliefs.
83: I don't see there's any good reason to stay flat out in top gear constantly and it's not really sustainable, but it's good to have the capability when it's needed. What I see many of are smart people who never learned how to go shift up They freeze like Ogged in the headlights of an oncoming analogy.
"What I see many of are smart people who never learned how to go shift up "
Ezra Klein has a thread today about uncredited free online university courses.Some commenters say little value to the brick & mortar university if you can learn on your own. A perfesser chimed in on how what is taught in university that is valuable is everything around the data & knowledge.
I thought of the thread here below about the memory of training, exercise, and sport, and the discussion of learning how to excel and perform.
This is all a little painful, not really.
This, yes:
I was praised for being smart, although more by teachers than family, and I knew I didn't have to work hard, so I was borderline lazy.
The good grades went without question. I worked, but not truly hard. Teachers supported the hazy praise, or expectation, from family backed up by test results. bah.
Then to college, behold: you thought you were smart? Meet Stanley Cavell, Hilary Putnam, John Rawls. Now you work. And I did. Reality check. Great part of my life.
Eventually, though, in grad school, there came a disjunction between being (truly, in concert with hard work) smart, and things working out for me.
Being smart and working hard has little to do with being happy, nyet? If you're smart, it's just a thing, part of who you are. Not your defining characteristic. Go from there.
Yeah this happened to me. I always dressed really preppy in high school (pink polos with popped collars [beofre usher], grosgrain belts, topsiders, etc.) because i identified with overprivileged trustfunders just because i was too smart to actually get middle class hard work values.
File me under "Hypertrophied Language Skills -- Didn't See the Point of Arithmetic Worksheets"
Sure, I coulda been somebody, I coulda been a contender, instead of a bum, which is -- let's face it -- what I am. But I never wanted to be Endicott. I like those reveries on cheap wine in the company of other smart, malformed bohemians. I like those long, dark highs of the soul, where the cannabis insists that everyone is laughing at you, and there's a policeman RIGHT OUTSIDE YOUR DOOR RIGHT NOW! I like being able to joke about the 36 hours or so I've spent in police custody. I like knowing that I've screwed it all up and managed to turn it around again several times in my brief span.
I've chatted amiably with celebrities and millionaires, and frankly there's not much to recommend either condition, except maybe the money. And even then. I have enough trouble keeping track of my few crummy possessions as it is, why the hell would I want more?
All those strivers and good-two-shoeses and plaster saints are full of shit.
From the article:
When Thomas took his first look at fractions, he balked.
But does he cry when he's doing long division and there's a remainder left over?
There's a whole lot of familiar-looking stuff on this thread, which is reassuring but not surprising.
This is why I want to have twins: one for the control, one for the experiment. (Actually, it's more so I can dress them alike.)
I don't suppose there have been any studies on parents using revenge to motivate their children?
Sorry folks, worked late tonight, came home, saw this post. I could write volumes on this one starting with the narcissism of parents who put their little prodigies on stage for their own vicariousness. My mother was one: Skipped 3 grades, won a scholarship, entered college at 15 years old. Never heard the end of her bragging through my entire childhood. And when it was my turn to show some talent, i.e., a National Science Foundation award, it reaped not always parental pride but scorn. The conflicting messages. On the one hand: "See, everyone, how talented our kid is." On the other hand: "There can only be prodigy in the house; I am the one, and you are not." Thanks, Mom, for trying to pull the rug, for the saboutage, for trying eat your own young, but you didn't succeeed at it, did you. Bitch!
"I received so much praise and so little pushing when I was young that I've always assumed that I'm right"
Oh yeah. Well, maybe not the "so little pushing" part, but definitely the rest...
One of the remarkable things about this place is how a whole bunch of people who assume that they're pretty much always right can manage to carry on mostly civil conversations.
Many resonances for me too. I don't think I was overpraised. I would have liked the experience of having worked really hard when young, to show me what it felt like and that I could do it. I've learned, but would have benefited from that knowledge and confidence at a younger age. Perhaps an/l/gous to that sense people who trained hard have that they're not going to die from physical exertion or being out of breath.
What's 'analingus' doing in that sentence?
113 - It's because we usually misread things in the direction of agreement, not disagreement.
113: if one's quite confident that one's right, there no need to push other people to agree. People do that to get confirmation of their beliefs (among other reasons).
109: Well, yes, the blogowhatever and this place especially is the underachiever's paradise. One get points for being smart, quick, and snarky, there's no penalty for not playing any particular game if one isn't good at it, and there's Google, Wikipedia, and the rest of the net available to prevent one from making really dumb mistakes.
This is why I want to have twins
Twins are weird.
Man, this is interesting. I got a lot of "you're so smart" praise as a child, and now I have absolutely no work ethic whatsoever. I never, ever learned how to work hard, and it's been a problem for me my whole life. I coasted through high school, and coasted as well as I could through college, too. It's only very recently that I've learned to take pleasure in pushing through something that doesn't come easily right away.
Curse you, mom and dad!
113: And if you're sure you're right about everything, you don't get all tense and threatened when someone disagrees with you.
Carol Dweck has a self help book where she examines the growth mindset of legendary coach John Wooden (UCLA).
How sharper than a serpent's tooth are y'all!!
I've never much blamed my parents for anything.
Wait a minute that fits into this whole "culture of irresponsibility" thing, of course I wouldn't. Never mind.
I have often worried about selfishness and general ingratitude. Do I owe the world for living in it? Did Hemingway and Salk and Edison do their stuff for me? One long chain of obligation stretching back to some lady with a clamshell or flint or something.
I do know socialization pressures are astonishingly powerful.
115: I would argue that, at a very basic level, that word is in *every* sentence.
125 -- Man, you kiss your daughter with that mouth?
I read that story a day or so ago and it's so me that it sounds like an astrological reading: so true, broadly speaking, that it could be any reasonably smart person.
In my case, though, yes, being the overpraised precocious eldest child has done nothing for me in the long run. I've always been--if not lazy, exactly--then not very interested in anything I haven't wanted to do just at that moment. If it weren't for good fortune and middle-class privileges, I might be in a gutter somewhere. I feel guilty saying all this, but I can't deny that I feel a little pride in it, too (which, of course, only makes me feel more guilty).
It's not clear that that article is about praised smart kids who are do well all through school; it starts that way, but then you get to the kids who continue to get praised despite not actually doing that well, or the kids who were praised at one level and then go on to do poorly at another. It seems like it's more about how to encourage those who need it.
Am I the only one here who can honestly say that I've *never* actually worked hard at anything in my life? I've had to work hard at overcoming my own psyche, but actually learning or doing things? Nope.
130: Doesn't the massive flurry of productivity that follows near-fatal procrastination count as hard work?
Modesty comes easier to some than it does to others.
130 - Really? Even passing quals or something in grad school? That was the thing I've worked hardest at, ever.
Am I the only one here who can honestly say that I've *never* actually worked hard at anything in my life?
Ah, a non science major.
131: Sorta, I guess.
132: You want I should lie? Feel free to think of me as lazy.
133: I actually did fail one of my quals, and retaking it was the hardest thing, psychologically, that I've ever done. But the exams themselves weren't so difficult; it was the psyching myself out/blowing off actually thinking about them that I had to get over.
Also, isn't Reed college filled with people exactly as described?
There are several schools that are havens for the bright but lazy. (My undergrad alma mater, Little Hippie U., is of course one of them.)
In my case, though, yes, being the overpraised precocious eldest child has done nothing for me in the long run.
I wouldn't say it's done nothing for me; I would say, though, that it's hindered as much as it's helped.
This is why I want to have twins: one for the control, one for the experiment.
This is terrible but also kind of awesome.
134: Does an almost bio minor count? I actually did work pretty hard on memorizing how photosynthesis happens. But that was enjoyable, so it didn't count.
130.
Narcissism does not become you.
I failed two of my prelims. (One justly, one unjustly.) I busted my ass all year long. I'd go study until my brain hurt. Especially real analysis. Man. Studying for that exam changed me. Before I passed, I didn't think I was capable of mastering it. Now, I'm pretty sure I can master anything (math), given sufficient time and effort.
I switched out of math/physics partially because I didn't think I was working hard enough in those classes. Also because of lack of continuing interest after taking some intro courses as well as listening to some scientists talk about their work. (Not that there was anything wrong with it; I just realized I wanted to go into a different field.) In a lot of the humanities majors the fact that you can do well without working as hard as many do in the sciences can mask the fact that some people do put in a lot of work (albeit ultimately for the same grades as the people who do well without working).
Does an almost bio minor count? I actually did work pretty hard on memorizing how photosynthesis happens. But that was enjoyable, so it didn't count
In my experience, mid and upper level chem classes hit a point where no one was winging it.
Reed students worked harder than anyone when I was there (except for MIT and Caltech, I suppose), and probably still. But they are well known for a smarty-pants attitude, social ineptness, and unconventionality. In the old days the policy was to encourage unmotivated students to drop out, which gave Reed probably the lowest graduation rate of any of the quality schools.
A lot of the wild and crazy beatniks and radicals I knew in 1964-7 ended up as prosecuting attorneys, career state department, bankers, etc.
139 - They just ramp up the difficulty. The purpose of math is to ensure that no matter your talent level, you feel kinda stupid.
True. Hell, my freakin' phd is fresh off the press and I still feel fraudulent.
143: I dunno, didn't seem like that to me. There were certainly some people in my university who made it through the course without much effort.
Didn't the story of Thomas ring really false for anyone else? We are supposed to believe that some kid in the top 0.01% of the population actually had some difficulty with fractions or spelling (for a third-grader, that is)? It just seems like that kindergarten IQ test probably wasn't very accurate.
"But that was enjoyable, so it didn't count."
What? Why?
JAC says what I was thinking (about fractions and spelling). Cursive is hard, though. I have a very, very ugly signature that I'm now afraid to change for fear of looking like I'm forging it.
146: Probably because I'm neurotic.
138: Au contraire! Everything becomes me, darling.
145.
JAC, those so-called IQ tests are another form of school admin convenience. They mean nothing. Witness the geniuses of the last century with very average IQs. Trash those damn things.
Although I'm sure there are very smart people who have troubles spelling. Maybe not in the blogosphere, but they exist.
147: I'm glad someone else had that experience. I never liked cursive and when I switched schools after 4th grade, everyone at my middle school wrote in block letters. I switched immediately and never wrote in cursive again. My signature is still a hideous puerile scrawl.
Parenthood is a series of high-stakes bets in a rigged game.
Dad: Hey, you got a C. I thought you knew this stuff.
Kid: I got an A on the exam; I do know it.
Dad: How come you got a C?
Kid: Homework.
Dad: Why didn't you do your homework?
Kid: I did most of it. Just never turned it in.
Dad: So why didn't you turn it in? All that effort to get the A on the exam is negated by the homework.
Kid: Chill. No one is ever going to look at what grades I got in 7th grade.
148.
I can be charmed by many things: Accomplishment, brilliance, a well-turned phrase, speed, the impossible basketball toss, a raptor grabbing prey, marine turtles nesting under full moonlight. But the knowledge that counts does not arrive like deja vue. What really counts for me takes work, and sometimes hurts. There can be no emotional, intellectual, or spiritual growth without humility.
153: Guess I'll have to cross you off the "to do" list, then.
152: well, he's right....
Seriously, that sounds so much like me. I slacked off in junior high--actually got a D in 7th grade health because I didn't do the homework. Then saw my older sister graduate as valedictorian & go off to the college of her choice, decided: "hey, I want to do that"....
153:
There can be no emotional, intellectual, or spiritual growth without humility.
Y'know, in this context, at least, I have to agree. B says she never actually (had to) work hard; I could have lived my life that way, but it was fucking great to have to push my own abilities. I'd have been very bored otherwise.
Pushing usually requires things getting repetitive.
There can be no emotional, intellectual, or spiritual growth without humility.
That's just something they tell the slow kids.
re: 130
I would have had to work hard to do well in my maths courses at university. So I dropped them.
My undergraduate degree, I pretty effortlessly cruised to firsts in all subjects, won prizes and exemptions from examinations , all without more than the bare minimum of actual work. Note, I didn't cruise through bored, I really enjoyed the course. And I read all the books, because they were interesting. But I didn't have to work to do well. A friend and I once had an 'agreement' that we wouldn't sit any finals exams where our total prep was less than the duration of the exam itself. I think both of us broke that agreement on pretty much every exam except one or two.
So, I didn't work hard until graduate school. However, my master's was a notoriously hard course -- it wasn't so much that the content was hard but that the amount of written work was large enough and the peer group sufficiently bad-ass that I can't see how you could avoid working. You could be the smartest person in the world and still have to work. I wrote 175,000 words in about a year and a half.
my rents mostly took the, "you could do whatever you want" approach. i think that's somewhere in between "you're gifted" and "you've got to work hard."
still, i can be lazy, work-avoidant, anxious.
what the article leaves out is the question of causation v. correlation. these kids [and all of us] could be lazy due to the brains, not the praise.
I received so much praise and so little pushing when I was young that I've always assumed that I'm right, and it's always baffled me when people don't agree. I've been pretty successful in competitive situations which catch my interest, but I never found a career. So I'm a guiltfree underachiever.
Shit, I'm Emerson!
My parents were clearly proud of my intelligence, but never expected perfection. They are very much into doing and learning things for their own sake - perhaps because of that I have always wanted to do well for my own pleasure, in things I cared about. I worked hard for my German O-Level (when I was 14, i.e. 2 years early) - that was the first thing I'd ever done that wasn't easy, and I was determined to get an A.
My kids are home educated, and so don't really compare themselves academically to others. My eldest (10) has gone to school this term and she has been quite surprised and impressed with herself to find that she's top of the class!
The Alfie Kohn approach is very popular these days - e.g don't just say, "What a beautiful painting" to your kid, actually say something specific about what you like, how they've done something, etc, or indeed, how hard they've worked on it. I praise my kids all the time - it's impossible not to! - but I try to make it more than 'empty' praise.
My dad does stuff like tell them he only loves them because they're good at maths though. (And he pretty much means it.) Still, neither they nor my brother and I seem too screwed up by it.
159: Of learning languages at least. Which is why I am очень плохa at Russian, and why I am very good at speeding through the routine parts of my job, which would be most of the parts.
131: "The nice thing about doing things at the last minute is that it only takes a minute."
Jeez but some people had some messed up childhoods. At the same time, I think it's kind of messed up to hate on one's parents for praise. My parents gave me the "you're very bright and you'll be able to do anything you put your mind to" talk all through childhood, something I take now to have been a combination message rather than one or the other.
I have been a fuck-up at plenty of things and wildly successful at other things and disinterested in still other things and had moderate successes and easy victories and hard-fought losses but I have also always felt that those results were pretty much mine to own.
Sure, it was expected that I would do well in school and then do well in college and when I didn't do well in college because high school was such a joke I'd never learned how to study then there was concern but there was never condemnation. When I (finally) got my undergrad degree there was nothing but pride.
Elaborating on it's kind of messed up to hate on one's parents for praise.
I think there's a big difference between saying, "Poorly formed praise had a somewhat negative effect on kids" and saying "It haunted me through adolescence and contributed to my problems today."
It is appropriate to discuss how well-intentioned parents are affecting their children while they're still children . Once you're eighteenish, your problems are your own. Regrettably, the playing field is not equal. But it is your life to lead at that point.
Like everyone else here, I read this article as being completely about me. I became pretty self-motivated and intellectually curious in junior high and high school, though, a development which I attribute to the period of emotional abandonment I experienced after my parents divorced. Best thing that ever happened to me!
I am only half kidding.
That's true, and I should have been more precise. I see, intellectually, how praise that is offered in the absence of any guidance on how to apply said talents or how to strive for success can create false expectations and lead to problems. I suspect that my oldest sister would have said that this happened to her. At the same time, it's important to me (nobody else has to think like this) to be appreciative of my parents' intentions when praising. They wanted happy, successful children who didn't feel like they'd been ridden by expectations without encouragement the way my mother was or mocked for having any self-esteem at all, as was the case with my father.
169: I don't see any problem with realizing and appreciating that one's parents did the best they could with what they had and at the very same time knowing they screwed up some things, some perhaps very much so. That balancing act is a big part of what being an adult is all about, I think. Getting a handle on it is good for oneself and also good for not passing pathology on to another generation if one has any contact with younger people.
170: I don't disagree with that at all. I think it's also fair to realize that the parents, in turn, had their own childhoods and parents with their own accompanying factors that shaped them, and their parents, and their parents, and so on. I guess what I'm saying isn't "shut up and put up" so much as be understanding enough to extend the same courtesy of reflection and realization to them and their own backgrounds.
Very sane and loving, McMan. Let's not blame our parents for this, especially if they were employees and therefore had already a different relation to iniative. I think small business owners and farmers are able to give their children demanding tasks from which they learn a great deal, and yet they're around to encourage and correct. My parents were both civil servants, gone all day. On special occasions, such as moving, I could learn what my parents could do by way of work and problem-solving, but mostly the world of work was a mystery to me and not something they shared with me much.
159, 164: "очень плохa" mean "The Shit", right?
As I've said, I think a lot of it is ambitious parents trying to program their kids according to some book method. The combination message Rubusto's parents used (which strikes me as the best method) doesn't take a genius to figure out, but it's like all the elite parents were waiting for the book (and the research) which would tell them to do that.
I really don't think the "you're so smart and you can do anything you put your mind to" message is any less damaging than the "you're so smart" message, because the implication is that the ability to do what you're putting your mind to shouldn't actually require any effort, since, after all, you're so smart. In fact, my parents said exactly that to me, and the article resonates with me as much or more with me as anyone else in this thread.
And it may not be that children are actually ruined this way, but it sure makes them a lot less resilient and more susceptible to other problems.
"Put your mind to" meand "make an effort".
Pushing kids to be successful is a different issue. The article and most posters here assumed that parents would do that.
Well, but I can't do anything that I put my mind to. I'm never going to be a mathematician like Paul Erdos. I'm just not that smart.
My parents used to tell me that I was smart and that they were proud of me. I thought that they were just saying that, because they (and the world) had ridiculously low standards. I mean, in the 19th century, kids started reading Greek at age 8. My parents thought that B's were just fine. I felt that my parents weren't pushing me hard enough. They did say that they would be disappointed if I got a poor grade when they thought that I was capable of doing better. I asked my father whether that meant that c's weren't okay
One of the things I've always found difficult is figuring out when to push oneself and when to let things go.
When I was 19, I got really depressed. Up to that point I'd slogged through fatigue and very mild depression, but at a certain point trying harder just didn't work. Telling myself that I could do better by putting in more effort would only have made me feel worse.
Bah.
From a congressional budget office article entitled "Limiting Tort Liability for Medical Malpractice":
Interestingly, the rise in malpractice premiums in the 2000s has been largely driven by the decline in the investment payouts that the Insurance companies can get. In the 1990s, insurance companies would compete to get peoples money so they could invest it in Cisco and the like but since the end of the boom they can't do this.
I should work harder to post in the right thread.
175: Well, their exact phrasing was "anything you want to be/do", but I don't think that "put your mind to" strongly implies effort given the other context.
To me "put your mind to it" implies a committment, as opposed to dabbling in something or going through the motions. But I don't know your parents.
In the case of mine it was definitely in the sense of genuinely working at it. They didn't want me to think everything would be easy; they wanted me to be unafraid to apply myself.
All right, how perverse is it that I spent the entire article wondering if "Carol Dweck" was actually "Carol Dwayk" and therefore Lebanese?