Unlocking Boys’ Potential
I was sitting in our school cafeteria when I saw my first Rubik’s Cube. A boy I knew brought it to lunch, and began a series of intricate rotations and counter-rotations while a group of us watched, mesmerized by the new toy. Quickly, the fad spread, and soon Conewago Elementary School was awash in nine year-olds spinning these multicolored cubes on bus rides, at recess, and during particularly dry lessons on the geography of Pennsylvania.
What I remember most clearly was how unsuccessful we all were in solving the cube. After a while, most everyone just gave up trying. One day, however, a sixth-grade boy actually did solve the cube in front of a dozen kids near the tetherball court, and for about a week we treated him as if he were a returning lunar astronaut—a pioneer whose command of spatial reasoning and performance under pressure we could never hope to emulate.
These days YouTube shows cubers solving the puzzle in a matter of minutes, and sometimes seconds. One suspects that such folks “see” the puzzle in a different way, and can intuit the quickest and most elegant ways to complete the cube. But even if they do that doesn't mean that the rest of us have to give up on trying to solve the puzzle, too, even if we have to work harder to understand it.
This is the great lesson of Carol Dweck and her research on learning mindsets: That what a “fixed” mindset might presume as a natural and permanent state of affairs, a “growth” mindset can interpret as a temporary condition that can be learned from and pushed past.
“We know that within every Browning boy is the capacity to make and execute plans, solve complex problems, and adapt to novel situations.”
Dweck’s research is especially pertinent to boys. This connection is well made by Emily Oster, who warns of the risks subscribing to “the myth of male incompetence.” The way we talk to boys and about boys matters, both to the boys themselves and to those of us who love and teach them. As Oster notes, observing that adolescent boys may, in the aggregate, trail girls in areas like organization, inhibition control and cognitive flexibility, that should not lead us to compromise our expectations, stop coaching our boys, or to doubt in their capacity for growth. If we say that boys are essentially and irrevocably “Non-Organized People,” by dint of their boyness—we are taking neither boys or boyhood seriously. Just as “boys will be boys” has historically been used to excuse inexcusable behavior, the notion that “We all know boys can’t do X” needlessly and unjustly limits our boys, and saddles them (and us) with a fixed mindset that denies them their potential and their capability.
This, of course, is part of Browning’s reason for being: We believe, and we consistently act on the belief, that boys can and will develop all of the qualities and capabilities that too many would suggest are beyond their reach. Our boys, like boys the world over, may face challenges born of the uneven nature of child development and rigidity of societal assumptions—but we know that within every Browning boy is the capacity to make and execute plans, solve complex problems, and adapt to novel situations. It may take practice and patience, intention and inspiration, coaching and care, yet these capacities can be realized; they are, in fact, realized all the time behind our Red Doors.
We should not place lids on human potential, whether we are doing something as mundane as completing puzzles, or something as substantial as helping a boy lead a flourishing life. In a learning culture premised on high standards, dedicated feedback and coaching, and unyielding emotional investment—a learning culture like Browning’s—the lids are meant to be lifted.