Tuesday, July 12, 2005

optimism, education

there's  a storm a-comin'

via eide neurolearning:

Some children seem to be born more pessimistic than others, but optimism can also be systematically taught. And a child with a higher degree of optimism is more likely to resist depression, be health physically, persist at difficult tasks, and succeed in school and later life. In fact, children with high 'optimism' scales are more likely to outperform in college what their SAT and achievement scores would predict.
[...]
Gifted children may also especially prone to existential depression, and studies of gifted children have shown that gifted students may react more intensely than average-ability students to frustration. Studies of stress and burn-out in gifted students suggest that key factors can be an inappropriate level of intellectual stimulation ('underload' or 'overload' as Hoekman et al. have recently commented).


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4 Comments:

At 1:01 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The first section seems somewhat contradictory to the second. hellz wind staff.

 
At 1:25 PM, Blogger Jesus Henry Christos said...

not sure if i follow exactly, but i assume that the contradiction you mention lies in the abutment of these statements: "optimistic children perform better" vs. "gifted children tend to be pessimistic"?

if so, i think that there is an unstated difference between a child being 'gifted' and a child 'succeed[ing] in school and later life'. but that might just be nonsense on my part; a correlation between the two would be an interesting measure...i'll do some digging and report back.

 
At 7:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

That is exactly the distinction I am referring to. whether or not "gifted" and "successful" are the same is subject to debate as well. I think that the unsuccessful individual usually thinks that they are.

 
At 8:01 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not to be one dimensional, but...

burn it to the ground.
www.jimwiltens.com/optimism.html

 

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