Summary Of The Secret To Raising Smart Kids

Students with fixed mind-sets tend to feel stuck or unable to improve in school. Although many people believe that intelligence is innate, current studies show that intelligence can be developed throughout life by maintaining a growth mind-set. Dr. Dweck uses many examples of empirical, anecdotal, and statistical evidence throughout “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids” by Dr. Carol Dweck to prove how one student's intelligence can evolve with a growth mind-set better than with a fixed mind-set.

First and foremost, Dr. Dweck uses empirical information to represent her studies comparing students with growth mind-sets and fixed mind-sets by making observations. In “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids”, Dr. Dweck states that she “...found that students

In “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids”, Dr. Dweck elucidates the feelings that students with growth mind-sets might have, Dweck states that, “The students with the growth mind-set felt that learning was a more important goal in school than getting good grades…”(Dweck 13). They believed “that the more you labored at something, the better you would become at it” (Dweck 13). Students with growth mind-sets wanted to learn and see progress rather than just receive good grades. Through progress and improvement, the students then gained intelligence through a growth mind-set. Also in the text, Dweck states “Jonathan suddenly lost interest in school refusing to do homework or study for tests…His parents tried to boost their son’s confidence by assuring him that he was very smart” (Dweck 1). Although Jonathan was a great student, he then lost all motivation to learn and study, he gave up overall and didn't care about improvement. Therefore his parents tried to use a method that would cause Jonathan to feel better about himself but, it didn’t work or have any effect on Jonathan. This indicates that parents should push and at least challenge their kids, not just give them compliments and honor them for achievements in which they didn’t even

In “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids”, Dweck states, “...teachers reported noticing significant motivation changes in 27 percent of the children in the growth mind-set workshop as compared with only percent of students in the control group.” (Dweck 25). With mind-set workshops, students can reach their fullest intelligence and potential, by ignoring their mind-set and doubts, and moving on as motivational students. Dweck then states that a mind-set workshop and study showed that “...their colleagues found that college students began to enjoy their school work more value it more highly and get better grades as a result of training that fostered a growth mind-set” (Dweck 26). Students who started to progress into growth mind-sets began to show more improvements and confidence throughout school