Comment by shubhamjain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shubhamjain | Hacker News Reader

It shows an interesting conundrum. Tell kids—and even people—that their work is awesome and they won't strive; tell them the harsh truth and they won't try again. Bulk of my personal history consists of falling in the latter. I hated being mediocre, and in my school life, I barely tried anything; when I did, it only took a brief while to understand that I am not up for it.

What's the solution? It's not as easy as educating students about growth mindset or long-term rewards of failure. They wouldn't absorb it the way you intended. Most failures don't necessarily motivate to improve. In fact, I think they result in people dropping out. It takes a long series of failures before you accept it as a part of the process.

I have read many theories surrounding how we can make our kids strive, make them resilient, and compassionate. So far, none of them have sounded convincing. There are probably many hidden factors involved and I guess it mostly boils down to: environment and luck.

You don't need to laud the outcome, you need to laud the inner part of the child that is striving to be better and that enjoys the process of doing the thing for its own sake. They need to know where they are, but discouragement is more of a sign that they're not enjoying the activity. When someone really enjoys something they like finding the flaws in what they're doing so they can get better.

I was far more discouraged learning French than Russian and Russian isn't exactly easier than French. The difference was that I was being forced to learn French against my (at the time) wishes. I just wanted to do math and play with computers - things that didn't discourage me.

Viewed from this angle the task of guiding children is different: How do we get them to enjoy the things we need them to learn?

I don't have an answer to that, but maybe its ok. Maybe children also need to learn that sometimes they need to muddle through something they hate, and maybe one day they'll change their mind about it.

> discouragement is more of a sign that they're not enjoying the activity. When someone really enjoys something they like finding the flaws in what they're doing so they can get better.

Are you sure this correlation is unidirectional? As a tutor, I frequently get people to enjoy things they didn't before simply by trying really hard to avoid discouraging feelings. In a way, a large portion of my tutoring is about getting people to enjoy the things they used to hate, because that appears to massively improve retention rate.

There's some more here if you're interested in how you get people to enjoy stuff: http://jorendorff.github.io/hackday/2013/tutoring/

> children also need to learn that sometimes they need to muddle through something they hate

Yes. Otherwise experience will do so, and not likely in a fashion that's pleasant or kind.

I've read that West vs East functions a bit differently. In the West we like to talk about the outcome, whereas in the East they focus more on the effort, which sort of ties into what you're saying.

There's a relevant TED talk about this on teaching 'grit' [0] (a mix of passion and perseverance).

I find her arguments quite convincing.

And I think like a lot of learning and any pathways in the brain - this is something you can practice with children, always trying to push them a bit further and making the pathways stronger.

[0]: https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_powe...

I always learned that you should praise kids for what they do, not for what they are. So don't tell them they're smart, tell them they solved a problem well. You don't have to be the best at everything, but you should try to improve. It's not about where you rank on the list of best students ever, it's about what you do, what you accomplish. Don't compare to others, compare to yourself: is this better than before? If so, awesome! You got better at something!

For myself, I would think that the best way to compel kids (and adults) to be more interested in learning and personal development is to relate it to their sense of identity.

People want to emulate their heroes and live into who they feel they are. The 'school nerd' phenomenon is one we're probably most familiar with; if you start seeing your identity as being a 'nerd' of the school, you tend to live into it even more. If you can somehow leverage that effect, it can be fairly powerful.

And then of course, just making learning fun, entertaining and a normal part of life and not just for school would certainly help. I read recreationally very early on because that was just normal in my home environment.

Overall, I'd worry less about making students feel good or bad over individual tasks, and pay more attention to fostering their desire to be the kind of person that needs to learn.

I very much agree on what you say. In fact I'd been in similar situation. So having thought about this a lot too, I'm thinking more and more often that it might make sense to do things even if it's "just" going to be mediocre. We don't have to strive on everything. Although eventually some things might go really well because one is truly interested in them.

Rewards can help but maybe it's sometimes better to reward oneself, e.g. by spending a lot of money on a breakfast after accomplishing something. But yeah, when you're in school, you very much depend on your parents.

Read up on Sudbury schools. The trick is to treat kids like real human beings. Don't tell them what to do beyond what is needed to form a functioning community and environment. Let them figure themselves out. Let them succeed and fail, be jerks (within limits that respect other's need for safety and support) and be angels, all under their own power. Don't worry about academic achievements as that stuff comes really easy once a person masters being a human.

Good leaders use both, sometimes the carrot sometimes the stick. A combination of praise and discipline to draw out the best results in someone. My best teacher at high school was liberal with his praise but if you slacked off you'd soon know about it.

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