Growth Mindset

Before today, I had seen the RSA Animate video. I didn't remember much about it, but what I did remember was the incredible irony that we watched the video in a class at high school that, like most high school classes, was graded based on success, not effort. Our teacher praised that video for the entire class period, then turned around and openly shamed students who had gotten low scores on our homework that week. It seemed incredibly hypocritical to me that we watched this video all about how people who aren't doing so great can and should try and can eventually improve their abilities, yet during the same class, students who tried incredibly hard were publicly humiliated in front of all their classmates, while students who didn't try at all (in this case, me) were praised simply for getting high scores.
As a result of this experience, I have some issues with the growth mindset concept. On it's own, I think it's a great idea- people should be encouraged to try again if they can't complete a task or understand a concept on the first try. However, it clashes horribly with the American educational system, which, as several of the articles and videos mentioned or alluded to, rewards immediate success and seems to almost discourage trying, because no matter how good you eventually get at whatever it is you're practicing, you'll always be compared to the person who succeeded on their first attempt, because "if only you could be as good as them". This educational system also pumps out an endless stream of young adults who crave instant gratification- many of my classmates freshman year, for example, were so used to succeeding at everything on the first try that, when they "failed" on an assignment in college (not always even an actual failure- I saw a student in tears over getting a B on a quiz), they immediately gave up and stopped trying in that class, because, in their minds, they're obviously not good at it. If we remade our educational system from the ground up to reward effort as well as success, the growth mindset would be very applicable. However, in its current state, the two are mostly incompatible, in my opinion.
At the level of education I'm at (the second half of a bachelor's degree, taking mostly upper division classes), the growth mindset is applicable to about half of classes. In this class, where there are a lot of assignments, you have a chance to put in effort and improve over time. In other classes, however, your grade might be based on one paper, or a paper and an exam, or, worst of all, just one exam. In these classes, there's really no space to apply the growth mindset, because, when your abilities are assessed only once over the course of a term, you have no opportunity to show growth. In this class, I hope to be able to apply the growth mindset to my work. I know I won't do amazingly on my first few assignments, but I can keep trying and getting better throughout the term.

 This cat reminds me of when I try to play an instrument- one of my favorite hobbies, which I'm very bad at. Source