What is wrong with saying, "Good Job"?

by Preeti Johns
 
A student did the monkey bars in one go, the teacher exclaims,” Good job Adam!” Another student drew a pretty picture in Art class; the art teacher says,” Good job, Linda” A kid shared his snack with his brother and the parent goes “Good job buddy”

What is wrong with the above sentences? All the above sentences had the teacher or the parent praise the kids with the easy and famous one liner- “Good Job”. As parents or educators we think that motivation and praise play a very crucial role in our child’s cognitive development, and it is very important to tell our kids how intelligent and smart they are to keep them motivated in whatever they are good at or to motivate them to get the ‘desired behavior’, which is true to some extent but somewhere down the line we forget or we are not aware of the harmful impact “Good job” has on our kids in the long run. Carol S. Dweck is a leading researcher in the field of motivation and professor at Department of Psychology at Stanford University. Her researches have focused on why students succeed and how to foster their success. Her work has illuminated how praise for intelligence can undermine motivation and learning. Well for starters, it decreases their interest in the activity. Alfie Kohn, author and lecturer of the book ‘Young Children’ claims that researches have shown that kids tend to lose interest in the activity that they have been praised with just a mere “Good Job” over and over again over a long period of time. Effie Maclellan in her article ‘Academic achievement-role of praise in motivating students’ talks about how praise motivates the kid to get more praise rather than focus on the hard work they put into it. Instead of just dropping “good job” at kids all the time, we should try to focus on the part of the activity they were particularly good at. For example- “You used a lot of bright colors in your picture.” The kid sharing his snack with his brother is not going to feel like sharing it again because the words “good job” thrown at him every time he shares, is going to take the emphasis out of his caring and thoughtfulness qualities. Another harmful impact of praise is that kids become less resilient and more vulnerable. According to Joan Grusec, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, researches showed that students who were praised lavishly were more tentative in their responses, (Ummm…. seven?) They tend to back off from the idea they initially proposed as soon as an adult disagrees with them or they were hesitant in saying the answer if they were unsure about it from the fear of being wrong and not validated by the teacher who earlier praised them by saying “good job”. The pressure to keep doing ‘good job’ at whatever level of goodness it was done earlier and then the performance goes down. In the article, Lauren Lowey, clinical writer talks about various cognitive researches done on kids that showed the kids’ (that were praised) performance graph going down as compared to the kids who weren’t praised at all throughout the task they all were given.  It’s hard to believe but if we actually make our praise specific to the situation and more child specific and very seldom. It’s one thing to praise kids to encourage them and motivate them to boost their self confidence but it should come in a qualitative way rather than quantitative. In a study done by psychologist Carol Dweck in Colombia with Fifth graders, students were divided into two groups- these kids had to take an IQ test- After the test one group was admired and told they did good and they must be smart at it. The other group was told that they did hard work at the test. Both these groups were asked if they want to take a slightly harder test, the kids who were praised for their intelligence were reluctant. Of those who were praised for their effort, 90% were eager to try the harder test. The kids who were labeled “smart” performed the worst of all. On the contrary the “hard workers” got the message that they could improve their scores by working harder and trying a harder test as compared to “smart kids” who believed they should do well without any efforts. Praising kids with intelligence did not make them learn any better and give them the confidence. Kids who always heard they are “smart” are kind of being pushed into a fixed mindset paradigm (they dwell on the idea of born smart but don’t get the motivation to work hard at it, there is no intrinsic motivation) whereas the kids who are praised for their hard work are being motivated in the growth mindset paradigm (the idea is that I am not good at this right now but I can be better if I try hard) If we talk about Piaget’s theory on cognitive development, we know ‘children organize what they learn from their experiences’ and if those experiences are related to hearing the phrase- ‘good job’ every other minute, it looses it’s significance and the cognitive development of those kids gets influenced and starts showing in their performance or their social behavior. From my own personal experience I am one of the educators who bombard the kids with this deadly phrase “good job” all the time and it has become a part of our habit now, to the extent that whenever we see a ‘desired behavior’ we blurt it out unaware of the possible harm we are doing to our kids. I attended a workshop last year about growth mindset and one discovery I made is how most of us were raised in a fixed mindset routine and unknowingly we pass that down to our kids too. This whole idea of growth mindset appeals to me as it makes so much sense after learning about different researches done on kid’s performance and behavior based on motivation and praise. Now, many educators and many parents might feel like- Why not praise the kids? It’s counter intuitive. But in reality our common sense is distorted, our brain is trained to think that if you praise the kid’s intelligence, it builds their confidence and they will succeed. Those students, who have been praised for their intelligence and how smart they are, start get worried about it in the long run. They don’t take any risks or try any new challenge because they are worried that they might fail the challenge and it’s their responsibility to stay smart like they have been told their entire life. I was a bright kid in elementary. I loved books, loved to write, and got good grades in the class. Now when I look back on how my grades starting decreasing as I entered middle school and why I became less and less interested in the subjects I used to love as a kid. As a kid I was told in front of my family, relatives and friends about how smart and intelligent I was. Like any other kid who wants to please grown ups, I absolutely loved the praise. But slowly I started feeling pressured to maintain my grades. Curriculum became more challenging; I wasn’t getting the desired grades anymore that got me that praise from my parents and teachers and this whole pressure made me less resilient and more vulnerable. Does this mean we don’t praise our kids at all? I think the question should be- how should be praise our kids? I feel that the focus of praise should be specific and targeted on the attributes that will allow kids to continue the desired behavior rather than the desired behavior. For example- instead of ‘great job’ we should say “ you did the monkey bars on your own or you used different colors in your picture, your tower is tall, wow! You shared that toy truck with your brother, you are working really hard on your puzzle or you did it!” Sometimes we as parents or educators don’t think about the long term goal when it comes to encouraging children, ultimately we want our children to be self motivated and challenged but in a positive way and sometimes we think it is positive and it is positive on the surface but way worse than a negative reinforcement, at the root.