If we can convince you that anyone can learn math, it should be a short step to convincing you that you can learn just about anything, if you work hard enough. Math is the great mental bogeyman of an unconfident America. But we also believe that math is the area where America’s “fallacy of inborn ability” is the most entrenched. So why do we focus on math? For one thing, math skills are increasingly important for getting good jobs these days-so believing you can’t learn math is especially self-destructive. Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer.Because the truth may be hard to believe, here is a set of links about some excellent books to convince you that most people can become smart in many ways, if they work hard enough: Thus, people’s belief that math ability can’t change becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.īut improving grades was not the most dramatic effect, “Dweck reported that some of her tough junior high school boys were reduced to tears by the news that their intelligence was substantially under their control.” It is no picnic going through life believing you were born dumb-and are doomed to stay that way.įor almost everyone, believing that you were born dumb-and are doomed to stay that way-is believing a lie. The well-prepared kids, not realizing that the B students were simply unprepared, assume that they are “math people,” and work hard in the future, cementing their advantage.Deciding that they “just aren’t math people,” they don’t try hard in future classes, and fall further behind. The unprepared kids, not realizing that the top scorers were well-prepared, assume that genetic ability was what determined the performance differences.On the first few tests, the well-prepared kids get perfect scores, while the unprepared kids get only what they could figure out by winging it-maybe 80 or 85%, a solid B.Some of these kids have parents who have drilled them on math from a young age, while others never had that kind of parental input.
Different kids with different levels of preparation come into a math class.Again and again, we have seen the following pattern repeat itself: How do we know this? First of all, both of us have taught math for many years-as professors, teaching assistants, and private tutors.