Genetic Inborn Myth

Intelligence is all in how you look at it. Most people see intelligence as either genetic or learned, and this affects how they act in educational situations, like in math. The students that grow up believing that they are not genetically math people generally do not work as hard to get better at math. However, the students that realize that math is a learned skill that must be practiced to be perfected are the students that work hard to improve their math skills. The real difference between people who are “math people” and those who aren’t is their view of intelligence because many believe in the genetic math ability myth while others realize that they can control how intelligent they are, and America is one of the guiltiest countries in spreading …show more content…
A general pattern tends to repeat itself in students across America. Some students come to school armed with a parental supported math background while others, lacking in math encouragement from home, aren’t as prepared, and on the first test, the prepared students naturally make a better grade. This leads to two different attitudes and two different types of students, the prepared kids who, based on their superior test scores, deem themselves as the “math people” and the unprepared kids, not ranking with the prepared children, declare themselves not math people and don’t try as hard in the future to improve (Kimball and Smith). This misconception of the unprepared students thinking that they just aren’t good at math can hurt them not only in math but in all subjects; the students begin to believe that they can’t change their intelligence. “Students with an Entity orientation believe ability to be nonmalleable, a fixed quality of self that does not increase with effort” (Kimball and Smith), or in other words, students believe that they can’t improve no matter how hard they try, which leads to a pattern of not working to improve. Seeing that many modern profitable jobs require a solid math background, this view of purely genetic math ability can severely affect a student’s …show more content…
American students have just as much potential as students in any other country, but American schools generally fail to develop that potential with an emphasis on hard work. In other countries, children go to school and study longer, understand that intelligence is learned as taught by the philosophy Confucianism, and act on this Confucian principle by persevering and continuing to improve themselves (Kimball and Smith). To be as successful as other countries, the United States must emphasize and reward hard work in schools. If “we already venerate sports heroes who make up for lack of talent through persistence and grit, why should our educational culture [in America] be any different” (Kimball and Smith)? The lack of these emphasis points along with the rumor of genetic intelligence makes the United States more guilty than other countries of harming students’ outlook on education and

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