![]() ![]() ![]() And that’s what they were doing-getting smarter. What did they know? They knew that human qualities, such as intellectual skills, could be cultivated through effort. They obviously knew something I didn’t and I was determined to figure it out-to understand the kind of mindset that could turn a failure into a gift. Were these alien children or were they on to something?Įveryone has a role model, someone who pointed the way at a critical moment in their lives. ![]() ![]() I always thought you coped with failure or you didn’t cope with failure. I expected differences among children in how they coped with the difficulty, but I saw something I never expected.Ĭonfronted with the hard puzzles, one ten-year-old boy pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips, and cried out, “I love a challenge!” Another, sweating away on these puzzles, looked up with a pleased expression and said with authority, “You know, I was hoping this would be informative!” As the students grunted, perspired, and toiled, I watched their strategies and probed what they were thinking and feeling. The first ones were fairly easy, but the next ones were hard. So I brought children one at a time to a room in their school, made them comfortable, and then gave them a series of puzzles to solve. I was obsessed with understanding how people cope with failures, and I decided to study it by watching how students grapple with hard problems. As a young researcher, just starting out, something happened that changed my life. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |