Whether you’ve been involved in the world of education, sports, self-help or business, it’s likely that you’ve heard of Carol Dweck’s growth mindset.
A Stanford University psychologist, Carol Dweck popularized her findings about how much success in any endeavor depends on a person’s mindset. In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, she explains that people who believe their talents and abilities are fixed tend to lose motivation when they experience challenges or setbacks, because they fear that failure will brand them as untalented or unintelligent. On the other hand, people who believe in the development of their intellect or skills, remain motivated in the midst of failure, because they believe in the possibility of improvement if they try new strategies, get help from others, incorporate feedback and engage in the work of deliberate practice.
Dweck’s portrayal of how our beliefs influence our behavior is truly mind-altering, especially given how she bolsters it with numerous studies of children, teachers, athletes and businesses. The importance of adopting a growth mindset as a parent, teacher, coach or business leader can hardly be overstated. There’s a reason her work has made a significant splash and been called “one of the most influential books ever about motivation” (Po Bronson, author of Nurture Shock).
But perhaps it’s worth asking whether what Carol Dweck is saying here is fundamentally new. For those participating in an educational renaissance, it’s worthwhile to step back and consider the extent to which the new ideas of modern research are confirming (rather than discovering) the traditional insights of the classical tradition of educational philosophy. After all, as the writer of Ecclesiastes said, “there is nothing new under the sun” (1:9 ESV) and “of the making of many books there is no end” (12:12). In this case, I think we need look no farther than Aristotle, the great philosopher himself, for an anticipation of the growth mindset.
Near the beginning of his Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle announces a very similar research question to that posed in Dweck’s research:
“whether happiness is to be acquired by learning or by habituation or some other sort of training, or comes in virtue of some divine providence or again by chance.” (Book I, ch. 9, trans. by W. D. Ross, accessed at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html)
The word translated happiness (Greek: ‘eudaimonia’) is not the flippant feeling that we often mean today. In fact, some circles are inclined to prefer the term ‘joy’ to happiness to imply something longer lasting—a life satisfaction or fulfillment rather than momentary excitement or the absence of challenges. Of course, Dweck uses the term ‘success’ in her study, which resonates better with the modern American focus on advancement in work and career. But both terms are meant to tap into the fundamental human drive for contentment, fulfillment, human flourishing, the good life.
And the question that is posed concerns whether or not our fate is fixed. Can we learn such that we succeed and find joy, fulfillment, blessedness, through our accomplishments? Or are we stuck with what we’ve got, such that we’d better hope we were one of the lucky ones, blessed by the gods (or by the random lottery of our DNA) with intelligence, talent, or whatever that it-factor is in our particular field or endeavor? Aristotle’s answer to this question is ultimately a nuanced one: No, if someone gets to the end of their life and dies horribly without friends and alone, all their accomplishments turning back on them and coming to naught, that person cannot be said to be blessed, no matter how successful they seemed earlier in life. Some external luck must play a role, but excellence, virtue can be developed, and it is virtue which ultimately makes a life blessed.
The key to Aristotle’s growth mindset is a proper conception of virtue or excellence (Greek areté) as an activity. The truly happy person finds fulfillment in the continual pursuit of excellence. As he explains,
“For no function of man has so much permanence as virtuous activities (these are thought to be more durable even than knowledge of the sciences), and of these themselves the most valuable are more durable because those who are happy spend their life most readily and most continuously in these; for this seems to be the reason why we do not forget them. The attribute in question, then, will belong to the happy man, and he will be happy throughout his life; for always, or by preference to everything else, he will be engaged in virtuous action and contemplation, and he will bear the chances of life most nobly and altogether decorously, if he is ‘truly good’ and ‘foursquare beyond reproach’.” (Book I, ch. 10)
Virtuous activities, for Aristotle, seem to be those physical, moral and intellectual virtues discussed throughout his Ethics, often described as a mean between two extremes: for instance, courage is a mean in having the right amount of fear, not too little (rashness) or too much (cowardice). Others, however, include the excellence of art, or skill in producing some good through a true course of reasoning; practical wisdom, or the ability to weigh correctly what things are good or beneficial for oneself; knowledge, or the ability to demonstrate the truth of something; and friendship (see Nic. Ethics VI.3-7 and VIII). In other words, the pursuit of excellence in school, work, business or relationships is the most likely course of action to bring about happiness.
And as he explains, part of the reason for that is that if you are seeing every opportunity as a chance to grow and improve in virtue (i.e. a growth mindset), then no matter what life throws at you, you will find satisfaction (eudaimonia) in that pursuit. Virtuous activities are durable sources of happiness, because they don’t flit away like less noble ones: money, sex, or power. There are very few circumstances, however challenging or disastrous, that don’t allow you the opportunity to contemplate or reflect on how you could improve. Even nobly bearing up under suffering is an exercise of virtue and will therefore give a measure of its own satisfaction.
One of the weaknesses of Dweck’s book is her narrow focus on success in specific life goals and endeavors, like school, sports or work, to the exclusion of this broader conception of the ultimate goal of a life well lived. But other researchers have made a stronger case for the connection between vigorous striving after excellence and happiness more broadly understood. For instance, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi conducted a study conducted in the 90s, in which subjects would subjectively rate their mood at random times throughout the day. Cal Newport describes in his findings in his own book Deep Work:
“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile…. Csikszentmihalyi calls this mental state flow (a term he popularized with a 1990 book of the same title). At the time, this finding pushed back against conventional wisdom. Most people assumed (and still do) that relaxation makes them happy. We want to work less and spend more time in the hammock.” (84)
The opposite is actually true; people rated their work time much higher than their leisure time, in spite of thinking that they enjoyed their leisure time more. As human beings we were made to be most joyful when striving in pursuit of excellence, when engaged in deep work, or deliberate practice. As the wise author of Ecclesiastes had said, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil” (Eccl. 2:24). Toil is not all pain and drudgery, but can actually be enjoyed… if we believe we can grow and see each task as an opportunity to strive for excellence.
What difference should this make for the work of education? Well, educators themselves should embrace the life of growth. Excellent teachers are not born, they are made. We should strive for excellence in the craft of teaching, but also for the practical wisdom of living life well. But more than that, teachers should cast a vision for their students of pursuing excellence in each and every ability, skill or type of knowledge that the curriculum calls them to. They should explicitly teach students to believe that they can develop their abilities, and learning activities and practice sessions should be framed so as to reinforce that belief. Teachers should aim to get their students willingly and joyfully engaged in the hard work of learning through inculcating a growth mindset. John Milton, in his tractate Of Education, described it this way:
“But here the main skill and groundwork will be, to temper them such lectures and explanations upon every opportunity as may lead and draw them in willing obedience, inflamed with the study of learning, and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men, and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.”
Here Milton claims that the most important and foundational task of the educator of youth is to put them into a certain mindset: that of being on fire with a zeal for learning and with a deep appreciation for excellence. Students also need hope, “high hopes” that they can make something of their lives, by living in service to their country and to God, and perhaps even becoming so excellent at what they do that their names go down in history. If this isn’t a growth mindset, I don’t know what is.
At the school where I work (Clapham School) these ideas are reflected in part of our mission, which is to “inspire students with an education… approached with diligence and joy.” This attempts to capture the powerful combination of hard work in the pursuit of excellence and the deep satisfaction that is the natural result. We call it joyful discovery for short. How will this influence your life, learning and pursuits? How will you teach, coach or parent differently because of your newfound understanding of the classical growth mindset?
For more on the growth mindset see my article on “Charlotte Mason and the Growth Mindset” here!
References:
Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation. Princeton, 1984. Also accessed at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html.
Carol S. Dweck. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine: New York, 2016.
Cal Newport. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Grand Central: New York/Boston, 2016.