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Logan Basave

Mrs. Ikram

ENG 105-16

3 October 2023

Carol S. Dweck’s Ted Talk

The point of Carol S. Dweck's TED Talk is to open your mind. Its purpose is to reveal to

you that there is a better way of interpreting or looking at failure. The issue that Dweck is

informing, in short, is a student's inability to look past failure. Dweck persuades the audience

about the issue she is addressing with her reasoning primarily through examples of Logos and

traces of Pathos and Ethos. Dweck's occupation currently is working at Stanford University,

where she specializes in human psychology and is very widely known for her research on

motivation and mindset. Dweck's other works have a limited variety of up to 5 books, one

exclusively in German and another an edited work of Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking, Fast

and Slow."

Dweck believes that most students tend to give up almost immediately when faced with a

new problem they can't solve with what they already know. Dweck wants to ensure that students

are correctly praised, not just for their success or talent. Dweck wants students to be commended

for their effort, strategies, and progress. They present the vast differences between a growth

mindset vs. a fixed mindset and the power of Yet.

In Dweck's Ted talk, she begins with the title of her philosophy, calling it "The Power of

Yet." She states that a high school in Chicago had given failing students the grade not yet and

explains how praising students for their effort and progress helps them understand. They are on a

learning curve that opens a new way of thinking for them to prosper.
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Dweck then explains the different mindsets of students. Every time students push

themselves to learn something, even after failure, they have growth mindsets. With that, they,

over time, become more innovative, make an enormous change in their grades, and become more

resilient towards problems put in their way. However, if students don't believe they can learn

their subject, they are more easily deterred by difficulty or resort to cheating. Those are children

who have a fixed mindset, one that leaves them feeling like a failure.

Dweck had seen statistics of all students from different schools after giving them a survey

based on their answers and grades. She determined whether or not the student had a Fixed or

Growth mindset. Sadly, she found that most students had fixed mindsets rather than growth.

After her surveys, she developed her philosophy, "The power of Yet." In Dweck's Ted talk, she

mainly targets her philosophy toward children because her philosophy would be most effective

and life-altering at such a young age. It would be difficult for her to target a high school audience

of hormonal teenagers unwilling to listen or take her reasoning and devotion to heart. Though the

targets for her philosophy are children, they would not understand or remember it all too well.

This is why she so desperately informs her audience, the adults, because they can understand the

philosophy very quickly and will be going on to have children of their own and help their child

maintain this mindset and outlook on failure or difficulty.

The power of yet genuinely stuck out to me within the TED talk. The power of yet wasn't

just something other than a failing grade. Giving students that appreciation and that sense of

hope leaves them feeling more determined to try harder than they did before. Studies shown

within Dweck's TED talk showed how children's brains react to "error." Students with fixed

mindsets seemingly had no activity going on. They needed to be determined to succeed. While

children with growth mindsets truly believed in the adults giving them that hope, giving them the
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power of yet. Their brains were bright red, giving much activity and showing that they were

genuinely trying to overcome failure.

The more I listened to Dweck's reasoning, the more I realized she was also convincing

the audience with her smile and tone of voice. The way she never stuttered or second-guessed

her findings left me seeing how confident and concerned she was about the situation she was

bringing to light. She not only convinced through emotion and tone itself but also reached out to

the parents in her audience through their love and sense of duty as guardians of their children.

Analyzing Dweck's TED talk also made me look back and reflect on my own life. I

remember times when I had given something my all or given up because I thought I would be

unable to excel or learn to adapt and become more significant at challenge. The concept makes

me interested in how growth and fixed mindsets do not only apply to academics but almost every

single aspect of life. Whether from our beliefs, culture, or Knowledge, we all have both in our

lives.

This philosophy carries a lot of weight for me because it is one I will remember and

reflect on when facing more complex life problems and obstacles. I will look at them and break

slower than I've done in the past. It motivates me to try harder than I ever have, to push myself to

adapt and find a way to solve an issue thrown my way.

I genuinely want to keep and remember this lesson into adulthood so I can help myself

and those in need who are stuck in that same loophole where others would find themselves.

Along with passing an eye-opening philosophy down to my future family so they don't ever think

they aren't good enough to get past their own troubles that life will throw at them.
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