Both the speaker, Carol Dweck, and the authors who wrote “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, make points and give examples about a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. Dweck is a big advocate for spreading the concept of having a growth mindset. In her TED Talk, Dweck says that phrases like “I love a challenge” and “You know, I was hoping this would be informative,” are examples of what she calls are growth mindset. She believes changing your mindset and looking at different perspectives can change a lot about how you act and how you will succeed in life. Dweck encourages people to engage, process, learn, and correct their mistakes. Dweck’s ideas about a fixed mindset come into play when reading “The Coddling of the American Mind.” In this reading, Lukianoff and Haidt give examples of what Dweck calls a fixed mindset. Dweck says that these people “..run from the error. They don’t engage with it.” In “The Coddling of the American Mind,” the authors talk about the ‘solutions’ to the fixed mindset people. These ‘solutions’ include using trigger warnings, which may be helpful in some cases but can prove unhelpful in many. Many trigger warnings used recently are unnecessary, but are used due to the sensitivity of many closed minded people, or people with a fixed mindset. The authors describe these people as trying to “…. scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense.” Many students and people in that generation now are very closed minded to the real world issues around them, which is not a good thing. These two readings work very well together in my opinion because they show the differences with examples of both fixed and growth mindsets.
