Growth Mindset: Discussion with Dan

Challenge yourself!
Photo by Ralph Hightower Source: flickr

For this discussion, I decided to talk to my friend Dan. I figured if anyone would be open to the Growth Mindset Method it would be him. Turns out, he already knew about Growth Mindset because he did Boy Scouts, and he said that they did a big push for Growth Mindset about five years ago. So rather than it being a discussion of me telling him what the method is, it was more about how great it is, and why and how it can be used more in schools.
Dan brought up the point that he thinks, particularly in the Political Science department, higher education is much better about applying this method. He feels that professors are pretty explicit about getting deep into discussion which challenges thinking rather than having the focus be regurgitating information. He talked about how the classes truly build off of each other, so if you learn for a test, you won't do well in later classes. The more you challenge yourself, the better you will do.
Dan thinks that the real problem is in secondary education. He thinks that middle and high schools are teaching for standardized tests or for grades, but that the students are truly learning anything.
I asked Dan if he actively applies the Growth Mindset to his academic endeavors. He said that "surface level", he is studying, learning, and pushing himself in order to to get good grades because he thinks grades and scholarship are important. However, he does think he still challenges himself to learn. I asked if he thinks secondary and higher education needs to be restructured so that he doesn't need to worry about grades and can apply Growth Mindset 100%. He didn't think restructuring was necessary, so here we disagree. I think education should fit the "not yet" philosophy whereas he thinks that is unnecessary/impossible.
It turned out to be a productive conversation as we compared our experiences with Growth Mindset and debated the application of the theory in schools.