Education

If you listen closely, you'll hear it in classrooms, playgrounds, and dinner tables. A child says, 'I'm just not a sports person' or, 'I'm just not good at writing' as a response to having come 10th place in sports day or failed their English test. The belief that our abilities are fixed and can't be learned or improved is called a Fixed Mindset, and it rarely comes from nowhere. There is a deeper reason for why kids develop this mindset early on, and it has everything to do with how we talk about failure.

The world that today’s children are growing up in does not reward obedience the way it used to. It rewards curiosity, adaptability and out-of-the-box thinking. Yet most of our schools still teach the values of the industrial era: sit down, be quiet, follow instructions.

For generations, schools, families, and institutions have conditioned children to obey authority without question. From the moment kids enter classrooms, they learn that the teacher is the ultimate source of knowledge, the rules are fixed, and their role is to comply. But times are changing.

As every parent will confirm, as soon as kids learn to speak they begin to ask questions. And not just any questions – they ask deep, thought provoking questions that even adults do not think of. So where does all this creativity go when we grow up?