While reading an essay entitled "Foucault, Power, and Organizations" by Stewart Clegg, I have begun to write and congeal thoughts about the new embrace by educationalists of the ideas of teaching students about "grit" and "mindsets." More and more books you pick up on educational methods and teaching practices seem to increasingly refere to Carol Dweck's ideas about "mindsets" and their role in success . (I have read her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.) Then there's all this discourse about "grit" as well. Though this concept goes back to Francis Galton, Duckworth, in her book, The Power of Passion and Perseverance, has more recently brought this term to the forefront.
When reading Clegg, he writes: "Bio-power normalizes through discursive formations of psychiatry, medicine, social work and so on. The terms of these ways of constituting the normal become institutionalized and incorporated into everyday life. Our own reflective gaze takes over the disciplining role as we take on the accounts and vocabularies of meaning and motive that are available to us as certain other forms of account are marginalized or simply erased out of currency."
Some questions:
Is the employment of the now "psychological concepts of 'mindset' and 'grit' a means of constituting a new normal using the psychological and educational sciences to marginalize ideas of social injustice and inequity?
Is the employment of these concepts in the educational apparatus a means to erase any thoughts or ideas of inequity and social injustice from our society?
Here's some my of my working thoughts on this matter:
The discourse of "grit" and "growth mindset" could function as a discourse that seeks to install a 'reflexive gaze" into students that asks them to disregard their circumstances in life, their experiences of poverty, misfortune and lives lived in inequity, and "get with the program."
It is an explicit "scientific" manifestation of the "bootstrap mythology" that propagates the idea that "if you work hard, then you will be successful."
It is a reflexive gaze which banishes any thought of inequity in society. It is directed at the souls of students to make them docile and compliant with the educational program.
It conditions individuals to ignore inequity in society and allows those who continue to stack the economic system in their favor to retain their pre-eminence.
It attempts to dispel any resistance to a socially unjust society. Ultimately it is a application of the psychological and educational sciences to the service of disciplining those who question the injustice of society.
I think perhaps before we jump on the "mindset" and "grit" teaching methodology bandwagon, we might want to ask some of these and other critical questions about what they really are doing with our students and our society.
When reading Clegg, he writes: "Bio-power normalizes through discursive formations of psychiatry, medicine, social work and so on. The terms of these ways of constituting the normal become institutionalized and incorporated into everyday life. Our own reflective gaze takes over the disciplining role as we take on the accounts and vocabularies of meaning and motive that are available to us as certain other forms of account are marginalized or simply erased out of currency."
Some questions:
Is the employment of the now "psychological concepts of 'mindset' and 'grit' a means of constituting a new normal using the psychological and educational sciences to marginalize ideas of social injustice and inequity?
Is the employment of these concepts in the educational apparatus a means to erase any thoughts or ideas of inequity and social injustice from our society?
Here's some my of my working thoughts on this matter:
The discourse of "grit" and "growth mindset" could function as a discourse that seeks to install a 'reflexive gaze" into students that asks them to disregard their circumstances in life, their experiences of poverty, misfortune and lives lived in inequity, and "get with the program."
It is an explicit "scientific" manifestation of the "bootstrap mythology" that propagates the idea that "if you work hard, then you will be successful."
It is a reflexive gaze which banishes any thought of inequity in society. It is directed at the souls of students to make them docile and compliant with the educational program.
It conditions individuals to ignore inequity in society and allows those who continue to stack the economic system in their favor to retain their pre-eminence.
It attempts to dispel any resistance to a socially unjust society. Ultimately it is a application of the psychological and educational sciences to the service of disciplining those who question the injustice of society.
I think perhaps before we jump on the "mindset" and "grit" teaching methodology bandwagon, we might want to ask some of these and other critical questions about what they really are doing with our students and our society.
