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fubarobfusco comments on Advice for a smart 8-year-old bored with school - Less Wrong Discussion
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Broadly, don't praise people for things that they couldn't have done differently. All it'll do is increase the importance that they assign to a trait that is out of their control. That makes them weaker, not stronger.
This applies to physical appearance as well, for instance.
But people have a lot of control over many aspects of our physical appearance.
We also have a lot of control over many aspects of how "smart" we are.
Don't we?
What this means is that we should teach the kids what they can and can't change about those things, and how to change them (via hard work), instead of continuing to teach them that appearance and intelligence are completely fixed, and then rewarding them for those traits anyway.
I certainly agree that it's important to learn what we can and can't change, and how to change what we can change, and that it's important to teach kids things that it's important to learn.
I didn't intend to devolve into platitudes; sorry if that happened anyway. I was just trying to relate your comment to the general topic.