Changing the U.S. Education System: How Fostering a Growth Mindset and Maintaining a State of Flow Is Optimal for Learning
By Madison Glende
I have always been a perfectionist, an overachiever, and a lover of learning. By the time I got to high school, the pressure to maintain exceptional grades and take college-in-school (CIS) classes changed things for the worse. Throughout 11th and 12th grade, I would wake up at 6 a.m., go to school for eight hours, and then I would work on homework from the minute I got home to the minute my head hit the pillow. I’d only have small breaks in between to take a shower or eat dinner. This was what every day looked like for me for two years straight. I ended up becoming more acquainted with my textbooks than my family and friends.
Sadly, interviews with students and high school teachers highlight similar concerns. The pressure to take rigorous college-prep courses with several hours of homework every night, and to participate in multiple extracurricular activities (to bolster college applications), often leaves students stressed out and sleep deprived. These concerns continue to grow out-of-hand largely because of how the U.S. education system conditions kids into adopting a fixed mindset. Simply put, a fixed mindset is a viewpoint in which students believe that their intelligence and talents are fixed traits that cannot be improved upon or changed. So, instead of working to improve their abilities and knowledge, students often rely on their current abilities to get a good grade without pushing themselves to actually grow and learn (ThinkFun, 2016). Additionally, high school has turned into a time where students are “learning what they need to learn to take the test, spit it out and move on” (Cullotta, K.A., Berkowitz, K., Fornek, K., & Baker, S., 2017).
Not only are students feeling immense pressure to perform, but many high school core classes teach information that is largely irrelevant to students’ futures. The ability to memorize geometry formulas or solve derivative equations without a calculator, for example, generally has little practical value outside of the classroom. According to Karen Tui Boyes (2018), a professional speaker that works alongside school leaders, “the ‘soft skills’ have been mostly avoided in schools because they are harder to measure,” even though these “soft skills” are arguably more beneficial to a student’s learning. Some of these soft skills include “persistence, flexibility in thinking, the ability to listen with understanding and empathy, metacognition, resilience, creativity, communicating with clarity, self-management, and being open to continual learning” (Boyes, K.T., 2018).
What Is Flow, and How Is It Related to Learning?
It is important to note that challenging and pressuring students when learning is not in-and-of- a problem itself, but the issue lies in the fact that we are “out of balance.” (Weissbourd, R., 2011). According to the psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (2008), students should ideally be in a state of flow when learning. Flow refers to an optimal balance between the difficulty of a given task and the individual’s current skill level. If a task is too difficult compared to their current abilities, then their learning becomes severely hindered by anxiety. If a task is too easy, then their learning becomes hindered by boredom. As Emily Polacek, a social studies teacher at Hinsdale South High School states, it becomes “a double-edged sword,” because “we want kids to challenge themselves, but not at the expense of their mental well-being” (Cullotta et al., 2017).
Personalizing Students’ Learning and Fostering a Growth Mindset
To maintain a state of flow that is optimal for learning, students should be challenged in a way that engages them. For most students, though, the pressure to perform and the difficulty of the learning tasks they are given is often more overwhelming than inspiring. So, what could we do to support student learning in the best way possible?
There are a few schools that are working to figure this out. Beaver County Day School near Boston created a school schedule with longer class periods to promote deeper exploration of class concepts, and more downtime for students to reflect on what they’ve learned. Additionally, Beaver has worked to reduce the amount of homework given to students and to increase the meaningfulness of homework that is still given. Lastly, Beaver makes it a priority to value students’ skills outside of the classroom, such as their time spent making art, playing sports, and serving the community (Weissbourd, R., 2011). To Beaver and similar schools, teaching students to value empathy and diverse perspectives is just as important as putting effort into learning class concepts, which should be focused on more in schools.
Another program, Khan Lab School, provides us with an even more drastic example of how the traditional school format can change. According to Karen Tui Boyes (2018), Khan Lab School operates under “the bold premise that students work towards mastery, not test scores.” Khan students “stay on the same content until they demonstrate mastery in relevant real-world contexts.” Instead of worrying about grasping a difficult concept in class before being tested on it and quickly moving on, students are able to take control of their learning to ensure that they thoroughly learn and understand the material before moving on.
In order for us to support students in their pursuits of learning, I believe a fundamental change needs to be made in the way the U.S. education system operates. By finding ways to personalize students’ learning and by teaching them the value of various life skills, it is our hope that students will stress less, adopt a growth mindset, and achieve a state of flow when learning.
References
Boyes, K.T. (2018, Sept. 4). Why our education system needs to change. [Blog post]. Retrieved March 24, 2019.
Cullotta, K.A., Berkowitz, K., Fornek, K., & Baker, S. (2017, Nov. 13). 'No worse fate than failure': How pressure to keep up is overwhelming students in elite districts. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved March 24, 2019.
Csíkszentmihályi, M. (2008). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.
ThinkFun. (2016, Sept. 19). The Value of a 'Growth Mindset' in Education. [Blog post]. ThinkFun. Retrieved March 24, 2019.
Weissbourd, R. (2011, May). The Overpressured Student. Educational Leadership, 68(8), 22-27. Retrieved March 24, 2019.