Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
“Do your best always.” Years ago, while I was Head at my former school, I saw these simple but powerful words emblazoned on the gates of another school, one with which we did long distance cooperative projects. Located in the poorest neighborhood of Nairobi, the school – despite its physical and financial realities – stressed determination as one of life’s deepest lessons. No matter what the undertaking, giving one’s best effort leads to better results.
This month’s Primary Day value – determination – is a similar bedrock habit that we seek to practice and instill from the earliest ages we serve onward. We very mindfully seek to form powerful norms while our students’ minds, attitudes, and practices are still highly malleable. We also keep our expectations high and consistent, and even our peer culture positively reinforces the message that giving one’s best is simply the PDS way.
Although American culture seems captivated by “natural talent,” even Caitlin Clark isn’t
the superstar she is because of her innate abilities alone. She has excelled because she combines her natural predilections with exceptional perseverance, determination, grit, passion, and practice. She is the epitome of determination and what Stanford professor Carol Dweck in her book Mindset calls “purposeful engagement.” (Our faculty read this seminal book over the summer, and some parents read it for a group discussion in the fall).
Dweck asserts that focused determination unleashes higher levels of achievement, and higher “capacity for lifelong learning and brain development” than previously thought possible. “Application and experience,” she says, “ not some fixed prior ability, [expose] a person’s true potential.” She defines a “growth mindset… as the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others.” A “fixed mindset,” on the other hand, is the belief that intelligence, personality traits, moral character, and abilities are fixed and not very changeable. A fixed mindset handicaps one’s ability to realize potential.
At Primary Day we focus with our children on developing determination because it is foundational to developing a growth mindset. The Kenyans may have had it right in boiling it down to something as concrete as “Do your best always.”