Education vs. current Schooling system!

"What is education for? Is it for pouring facts and formulas into students’ heads, or is it for creating learners? 

At its best, was the U.S. educational system known for producing memorizers and test-takers or was it known for producing innovators? I think we can agree that we want to create learners and innovators— people who seek challenges, stretch to learn new things, and bounce back from (or are even energized by) setbacks.

If this is what we want, we are going about it in exactly the wrong way. High stakes testing may in fact be creating the very opposite in our students.

Research shows that an environment that emphasizes evaluation and testing creates a fixed [achievement] mindset. That is, it sends the message that intellectual abilities are fixed and that the purpose of school is to measure them. Students come to see school as the place to look smart and, above all, not look dumb— not a place to create and learn.

A fixed mindset also breeds low effort (because students believe that high effort advertises low ability) and poor reactions to difficulty (because they believe that difficulty also reveals low ability). These are not the habits of people who achieve or innovate in adulthood.

Growth mindset environments, in contrast, portray intellectual abilities as skills that are acquired not inborn, and put the focus on the learning process. When students are taught a growth mindset — when they are taught that every time they stretch themselves to learn hard, new things, their brains make new connections and over time they can get smarter—their motivation to learn increases, their desire for hard tasks increases, and their resilience in the face of difficulty increases.

Even their achievement test scores increase— because they want to learn, not because they drilled for the test all year. Plus, when students are taught a growth mindset, girls stay in math and students from underserved minority groups earn higher grades."

~ Carol Dweck ~

Full article over at Education Nation:
http://www.educationnation.com/index.cfm?objectid=F8275747-8283-11E1-8459000C296BA163

Carol Dweck is a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.