The Faults of Growth Mindset

We are told throughout our schooling that the key to success is having a “growth mindset.” The intended definition of the growth mindset is when you believe your talents and abilities are not fixed, and you can change them through effort and resilience. It sounds great on paper, and the idea can be found in schools and self-help books everywhere. So, what’s the problem? While the growth mindset is not inherently bad, it is often misinterpreted and misapplied. 

Many schools strongly believe in the growth mindset and push their students to practice one, claiming it will help them in their studies and in the long term. However, many believe this is the wrong approach. The principles of the growth mindset are with enough effort and practice, anyone can achieve anything. Well duh, of course effort and practice will make you better at something! So, why is this bad? Again, it’s not. The way that it is spread and believed is the issue.

The message you walk away with after your school’s growth mindset presentation is that having a growth mindset will lead you to success while having the opposite, a fixed mindset, will leave you stuck. However, labeling something as personal as how your own brain thinks as “bad” is harmful. First of all, it’s not possible to always have a growth mindset, which most acknowledge, but that part of the growth mindset is often ignored. When the growth mindset is praised and the fixed mindset is villainized, people will push down and suppress fixed mindset thoughts. Students who have had the growth mindset idea shoved down their throats for years will go farther into the dreaded fixed mindset, believing they can’t accomplish this because they don’t have a growth mindset.

It’s also not always beneficial to have a growth mindset. Sometimes, effort alone won’t cut it. Instead of continuing to try the same thing that isn’t working, sometimes what students need is to ask for help or try a different strategy to do things they are struggling with. Obviously, you shouldn’t give up on your work or schoolwork, but it’s not shameful to give up an activity you don’t enjoy or aren’t making progress in. Perseverance is good, and you should not give up on things that are important to you, but reconsidering where you want to spend your time is not bad or harmful. It’s a necessary part of life.

While the idea is fine, the implementation of the growth mindset does more harm than good. The students who have a growth mindset would have had it whether their school forced them to sit through presentation after presentation or not, assuming that they’re using it beneficially. 

The solution to this problem is to change the way that the growth mindset is presented. Show people that it’s okay to have fixed mindset thoughts sometimes. It’s okay to accept that you can’t be optimistic and put in one hundred percent effort all of the time. The occasional fixed mindset thought won’t prevent you from success, and you don’t have to keep trying the same thing when you know it isn’t working.