Post by mrsphyllistorgo on Mar 1, 2011 21:29:58 GMT -5
I was flipping along in Jezebel today and found a very interesting article that really hit home for me.
It was basically reviewing a study of children and their ability to try tasks over and over. It found that, for girls, the brighter the child was, the less likely she was to stick to learning a difficult task if she didn't master it fairly quickly.
At first this seemed odd, to say the least: you'd think someone who was praised for her intelligence would be more inclined to tackle a problem that involved using that intelligence. But the article went on to describe a a particular accepted version of intelligence that sounded deeply, uncomfortably familiar.
In a nutshell, it basically said that "bright girls" (for this study's parameters, girls in the US and Canada school systems) were praised for being bright because it didn't require a lot of time and effort to teach them. Girls are, majorly, praised for being good and quiet, and thus "brightness" is seen to be a part of that. So intelligence becomes an innate, solid thing--you have it or you don't, and it doesn't grow or change. You're good at This, but if you have trouble with That, it's somehow a character flaw, and you will never achieve goodness in That. After all, you've equated being "bright" with not needing help, so needing help, de facto, equals not bright.
I cannot tell you how much this hit home for me, in so very many ways. I am exceptionally good with words and language (in English, anyway) but because I struggled with math it became my bete noir, my Waterloo, and my Molasses Swamp all rolled into one. It made me feel stupid, and that made me feel worthless, and that led to a huge mental block about all mathmatics that continues to this day. My doctor and former teacher father would try to help, but the way he chose to express his frustration--"Honey, you are so smart, I won't let you not think that"--ironically had the opposite effect of the one he intended.
See, I heard that NOT as "you're so smart, so you can learn this even if it's hard", but as some kind of willful denial of my reality. I WASN'T smart when it came to math, not in the way I thought of as smart. Smart meant easy, quiet, effortless--it just came to me, it wasn't something I achieved, and thus having trouble with something meant I had somehow done something wrong or was fundamentally flawed. I would shriek, cry, yell that I was NOT SMART! I WASN'T! until I hurled myself down the hall to my room to sob over how no grownup understood me.
And believe me, having a reputation as a "brain" in school didn't help. Whenever I didn't understand something, some of my teachers lost patience with me very quickly: I was supposed to be the one who didn't need lots of explanations or repetition to get something, so why couldn't I get it in gear? And my peers were no better: I will never forget not knowing the answer to a teacher's question and having everybody around me gasp in disbelief. (My teacher was awesome and quickly pointed out that people do have a right not to know something or other, thanks very much.)
This has also spread to many other areas of my life: I've never been "good" at any kind of sport, particularly ones involving hand-eye coordnation or balance. How much of that was just not being very athletic, and how much internal monologue that whispers "you suck at this and you'll always suck at this" on a continuous loop? Same with weight loss, learning languages, etc. I have these blocks that won't let me get past the inital learning curve and discover if I really would rock at modern dance or philataly or whatever if only I could get my id to grasp that "initial clumsiness =/=complete failure forever."
How about you? Does this sound familiar? Do you think it has to do with your gender, family dynamics, or what have you?
It was basically reviewing a study of children and their ability to try tasks over and over. It found that, for girls, the brighter the child was, the less likely she was to stick to learning a difficult task if she didn't master it fairly quickly.
At first this seemed odd, to say the least: you'd think someone who was praised for her intelligence would be more inclined to tackle a problem that involved using that intelligence. But the article went on to describe a a particular accepted version of intelligence that sounded deeply, uncomfortably familiar.
In a nutshell, it basically said that "bright girls" (for this study's parameters, girls in the US and Canada school systems) were praised for being bright because it didn't require a lot of time and effort to teach them. Girls are, majorly, praised for being good and quiet, and thus "brightness" is seen to be a part of that. So intelligence becomes an innate, solid thing--you have it or you don't, and it doesn't grow or change. You're good at This, but if you have trouble with That, it's somehow a character flaw, and you will never achieve goodness in That. After all, you've equated being "bright" with not needing help, so needing help, de facto, equals not bright.
I cannot tell you how much this hit home for me, in so very many ways. I am exceptionally good with words and language (in English, anyway) but because I struggled with math it became my bete noir, my Waterloo, and my Molasses Swamp all rolled into one. It made me feel stupid, and that made me feel worthless, and that led to a huge mental block about all mathmatics that continues to this day. My doctor and former teacher father would try to help, but the way he chose to express his frustration--"Honey, you are so smart, I won't let you not think that"--ironically had the opposite effect of the one he intended.
See, I heard that NOT as "you're so smart, so you can learn this even if it's hard", but as some kind of willful denial of my reality. I WASN'T smart when it came to math, not in the way I thought of as smart. Smart meant easy, quiet, effortless--it just came to me, it wasn't something I achieved, and thus having trouble with something meant I had somehow done something wrong or was fundamentally flawed. I would shriek, cry, yell that I was NOT SMART! I WASN'T! until I hurled myself down the hall to my room to sob over how no grownup understood me.
And believe me, having a reputation as a "brain" in school didn't help. Whenever I didn't understand something, some of my teachers lost patience with me very quickly: I was supposed to be the one who didn't need lots of explanations or repetition to get something, so why couldn't I get it in gear? And my peers were no better: I will never forget not knowing the answer to a teacher's question and having everybody around me gasp in disbelief. (My teacher was awesome and quickly pointed out that people do have a right not to know something or other, thanks very much.)
This has also spread to many other areas of my life: I've never been "good" at any kind of sport, particularly ones involving hand-eye coordnation or balance. How much of that was just not being very athletic, and how much internal monologue that whispers "you suck at this and you'll always suck at this" on a continuous loop? Same with weight loss, learning languages, etc. I have these blocks that won't let me get past the inital learning curve and discover if I really would rock at modern dance or philataly or whatever if only I could get my id to grasp that "initial clumsiness =/=complete failure forever."
How about you? Does this sound familiar? Do you think it has to do with your gender, family dynamics, or what have you?