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The Perils and Promises of Praise

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The Perils and Promises of Praise
The Perils and Promises of Praise In her article, “The Perils and Promises of Praise,” Carol Dweck provides a lot of research to prove her claims that student praised for being wise, which according to Carol many educators belief that it will build confidence and further motivate students’ to learn, is untrue, whereas students praised for effort (works-hard ) get a boost in their performance. Indeed, the author has a reasonable point, I strongly agreed with her assessment that by giving students’ the label of “smart” does not prevent them from underperforming, but rather it might actually be causing it. In addition, I believed in her study that student who has fixed mind-set does become extremely anxious with their studies that they sometimes tend to push their limits, just to prove how smart they are. On the other hand, I liked the part when the author points out that even Einstein or a Mozart have focus on effort, not talent. I also like the idea of Alfred Binet, who is the inventor of the IQ test, to have some kind of test that will identify students who were not benefiting from public school curriculum, which I strongly agreed! I also like the fact that Dweck mentioned the behavior of the current generation students. As a reader, I was fully able to understand more the setbacks and the problems in our today’s society. Furthermore, what really amazed me is that how the author was able to include in her research the anatomy of brain, and the relation of the brain to motivate the person to learn. However, I disagree with some of the author’s had to say about the students. Having said that, I believe that, in some point, it is necessary for a teacher to praise the students’ for being smart, (I am proud of you all) for one thing, students will always like receiving good compliments to a teacher, or anybody else for that matter. The bottom line, besides student praised for being smart, they should also praised students for effort, both at the same time. In that

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