Too smart for your own good

Tyler Cowen points to this article on how to raise bright children:

Our society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact, however, more than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.

The result plays out in children ... who coast through the early grades under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted. Such children hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.

In other words, we need to knock smart kids down a peg.

This is true, but not all that groundbreaking. It relates to the psychology concept "locus of control" -- someone who has an internal locus of control believes his behavior affects his life; someone with an external locus of control believes things just happen to him. If you tell a kid he's doing well in school because he's just plain super, he'll take later struggles to mean his super-ness has worn off. If instead you encourage a kid to work hard, and present him with material that challenges him, he'll learn that his effort, as opposed to just his biological endowment, is connected to his performance.

Charles Murray once noted another reason smart children should be taught lower self-esteem:

[C]hildren who know they are smarter than the other kids tend, in a most human reaction, to think of themselves as superior to them. Because giftedness is not to be talked about, no one tells high-IQ children explicitly, forcefully and repeatedly that their intellectual talent is a gift. That they are not superior human beings, but lucky ones.

A little humility goes a long way.