Disney’s Fairies Are the Wrong Way to Think About Learning
The Problem with Disney’s Fairies: Inborn Talents vs. Acquired Abilities
The Disney Fairies, a multi-million-dollar franchise, are teaching our kids that some people just aren’t good at math, or sport, or dance, regardless of their effort and perseverance. This is not a feminist piece about the amount of skin female fairies show versus male fairies, nor about Rosetta, who is first and foremost, dedicated to fashion. I’m talking about the basic premise of Disney’s fairies: they have talents…unitary, immutable talents.
Tinker Bell is a tinker fairy, she fixes and invents things. Iridessa is a light fairy, and she makes rainbows and helps sunflowers grow. Those are pretty cool talents, as talents go. But then there are baking-talent fairies, which is not a bad talent to have, but you probably don’t get out of the kitchen very often. Worse still are the polishing-talent fairies (see Vidia and the Fairy Crown, p 2)—their life is dedicated to polishing things other fairies make and other fairies use. It’s all a bit of an upstairs-downstairs caste system for my liking.
A fairy can only have one talent. In Tinker Bell’s first movie, she tried out a handful of tasks and, although at first she didn’t want to, she finally felt at home with a hammer in her hand. That is a very empowering image: a girl fairy with pom-poms on her shoes holding a large wooden mallet. Go girl! But, for the rest of her fairy life, she will live and die with that hammer.
Let’s forget, for the duration of this piece, that the relegation of menial tasks as talents essentially creates a tiered society with a permanent underclass. Instead, let’s think about what we are teaching our kids about education and ability. About perseverance and effort. About responsibilities and fault.
If you subscribe to the talent model of education, some folks are naturally good at math and other folks just aren’t. Some folks are good at sports, and others aren’t. Some people are “all thumbs” or have “two left feet” when it comes to coordination.
But there is an alternative model of education. It embraces a “growth mindset” and suggests that environment is responsible for young children’s intellectual development. You can take one group of first graders and tell them that they will be able to solve the problem if they try hard enough. You take a second group and tell them that the problem is hard, but if they’re good at math, they’ll be able to figure it out. From the first group, even those students who couldn’t figure out the answer persevered and put in effort until the end of the exercise. Those in the second group gave up early and started daydreaming long before the exercise was over.
The inborn-talent model often cites genetics—genes that scientists have yet to discover. But the results of the inborn-talent model are the product of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Tell someone that they are good at something and they’ll want to win your praise by being good at that thing. That means, they have to avoid challenges so they don’t prove you wrong. They’ll give up on tasks easier because they don’t want you to see them struggle. They have to disregard negative feedback because it contradicts the “fact” that they are good at the task. They will always compare their own success to the successes of others and will feel threatened by superior performance. Worst of all, they won’t branch out and try other activities that they might enjoy more and find more fulfilling.
The growth mindset, on the other hand disregards the deterministic view and heralds free will, effort, learning, and adaptation. Because all learning, in this model, is the result of overcoming challenges, folks will rise to the challenge, seeing it as an obstacle and not a barrier. Failure to overcome a challenge doesn’t lead to giving up, it leads to trying harder or seeking new knowledge in order to become better and, with effort and perseverance, overcome the challenge. Because the failure to overcome a challenge is not a failure in them as a person, they will use negative feedback to learn and improve. They will be inspired by the successes of others, and they will strive for ever-higher levels of achievement.
I am not demanding that parents ban their children from watching or reading about Disney fairies—they have some good, character-building lessons there. But I am suggesting that parents talk to their children about the fairies’ talents. Don’t let the opportunity pass to talk about Zarina, who was exiled from Pixie Hollow when she tried to improve on her role as a dust-keeper fairy. Tinker Bell represented the inborn-talent mindset and was afraid of Zarina’s innovations. Zarina even turned to pirates to find the environment where she could experiment and thrive. But in the end, she returned to Pixie Hollow and apologized for her rebelliousness. Inborn talent:1, growth mindset:0.
The premise of the fairies’ inborn talents can be a fun one. There are online quizzes for kids to find out what kind of fairy they would be. But that fixed-ability mindset has to stay in the books and toys. Kids have to be encouraged to try new things and fail. They have to look at the failures of their real-life idols and not just their successes. Help them acquire the habits of effort and perseverance with examples like Michael Jordan:
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Let us no longer talk about “talent” and judge outcomes solely on performance. The road to mastery is long—In Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, true mastery takes about 10,000 hours of dedicated practice. Otherwise, the pressure to perform will lead to a fear of failure and stagnation of ability. Worse, like those who say “I’m not good at math,” they will adopt a learned helplessness that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
BC Dee has a Master’s in Education, a PhD, and more than twenty years in the classroom. He is the father to a magical four-year-old girl. And he is the author of several children’s books such as The Hiccupopotamus, The Girl Who Drank the Moon, and The Celebrated Jumping Frog. You can find out more about BC Dee at his website: http://www.bcd-123.com/
