I agree with you that learning to work hard is not a worthy goal on its own, but the praise effort vs ability debate isn't about encouraging a child to work hard but simply to praise them on what they have control over (their effort) vs their innate abilities.
That makes a lot more sense, and is actually pretty close to what I was getting at (that what's often considered "natural intelligence" is really the end result of a whole lot of hard work aimed at the process of learning instead of the material being learned, and that it's not productive to pretend that one can't influence it).
That makes a lot more sense, and is actually pretty close to what I was getting at (that what's often considered "natural intelligence" is really the end result of a whole lot of hard work aimed at the process of learning instead of the material being learned, and that it's not productive to pretend that one can't influence it).