| Another deceptive title designed to attract clicks. The problem is with how we attribute achievement, how we praise kids, not the kids themselves. But the title as written attracts more attention. The reader thinks, "What could possibly be wrong with the bright kids?" Click. I'd argue this finding implicitly speaks to the way we view and value intelligence and ability. Seems to me we refuse to acknowledge effort is as useful as some sort of innate ability. Our dominant fascination (judging by scholarly and mass media publications) seems not to be with hard work, and achievement despite the odds, but instead with those who are "gifted" and do not need to work as hard as everyone else to achieve the same results. Surprise! The bright kids are not as motivated. That's the revolutionary finding presented in this fluff HBR blog "content". We go to great lengths to try to find such "innate" above average ability, to label and preselect "the bright kids", instead of devoting our attention toward motivating and rewarding _effort_, which in my opinion might ultimately harness more human potential in the aggregate than focusing excessively on "the bright kids". Especially when you consider that the attention we place on ability and the "bright" label we give them could possibly lower their overall performance, if you believe what's suggested by this study. |
That's true for the most part, however motivating bright kids doesn't take away from resources so much so that rewarding effort becomes unfeasible. Bright kids require a lot of motivation because either:
1) They tend to doubt their abilities, and because they're bright spend most of their time figuring out whether they're actually bright as stated in the article.
2) They get bored with ordinary mundane work, and so break away from any formal system of learning and seek for an outlet, which may turn out to be very productive, or because they're so young, it may be counterproductive and result in them going back to point 1.