Are we here because of a Gift? Or did we do it ourselves?

Carol Dweck’s essay Is Math a Gift? Beliefs that put Females at Risk? puts the focus on how our thoughts can influence our performance, specifically in the middle school era. Dweck really talks about how we perceive our talent to be a huge factor in how confident we are in our own abilities. I like how she talks about this because she relates how we think back to the first essay we read, which was Valian’s essay. Dweck said that there are women who believe that their ability or talent for a subject is a “gift” and that these women are usually the ones who fail in the face of adversary, such as confusion to a problem or failing to solve a problem. When this type of woman fails to do just the first problem she cannot do, she usually gives up the subject and moves onto a different one because she believes that she is not “talented” enough to do good in that subject. These women are what Valian calls entity theorists because the women believe that their ability is fixed and cannot be changed. Entity theorists believe the same thing. What caught my attention when I read this article was that Dweck refers to these women in the same terms, using “a fixed entity” to describe them (48). Yet, Dweck also believes that there are women who believe that their talent is just waiting to be expanded to its fullest potential that it can be, and these are the women who Valian would call incrementalist theorists.

 

But, Dweck took a step further than Valian and started to tackle how these different mentalities can affect each group of women. Dweck did this through her study of students in a mandatory calculus course at Columbia University (50). At the beginning of the semester, she asked each student if they though their ability was a gift or something that can be molded. She also asked them if they though stereotyping was actually a thing in the math class, which the students said yes to. At the end of the semester, the stereotyping affected each group of women differently. The women who thought that their talent could be molded through learning from their downfalls and mistakes were affected very little from the stereotyping. Yet the women who thought their talent was a gift were greatly affected by the stereotyping. The stereotyping caused the “gift” women to feel less comfortable in their environment and that they didn’t belong.

 

What I liked about this essay was the relation to Valian’s essay and how Dweck built upon the incrementalist and entity theories through analyzing how these mentalities affect women in their schoolwork. She also built it up by looking at the beginning of the gender gap, which starts in middle school. By figuring out how these two different mentalities affect us and by looking at how these mentalities affect us in middle school, Dweck gave two solutions to the problem. One solution was to give praise to women, which was not helpful since it helped encourage the entity mentality and the thought that they will not have to work as hard as other women to do the same problem or task. The second option was to teach students in middle school on what natural ability is and how everyone, no matter the gender, can expand their ability. This helps teach students that all people are equal in intelligence and that it is up to you to put in the effort and time to expand your own knowledge.