I think the bigger danger is perpetuating the typical American cultural belief that people are with smart or stupid. Contrast actual American achievement with eastern cultures where they consider intelligence to be more of a skill that can be refined through practice.
The author is rebutting feel-good pop psychology, which I suppose needs to be done for balance, but you can't argue with the achievement gap, and there are solid studies showing that praising kids for "working hard" leads to better achievement than praising them for "being smart."
eastern cultures where they consider intelligence to be more of a skill that can be refined through practice
Which cultures are you referring to? I'm Chinese-American, and the impression I got from my parents is that they believe everything is genetically determined.
I'm Brazilian-American so I know nothing of eastern culture first hand. This is just something that I recall reading many times in discussion of the performance gap between American and other students around the world. Do you believe your Chinese parent's views on the subject are representative of the predominant cultural beliefs in China?
I've lived the vast majority of my life here, so I can't speak for the average Chinese person in China. But based on all the Asians I've ever met in the US, it's a pretty clear yes.
The US is the most progressive nation in the world in terms of promoting ideals of racial and gender equality, which naturally results in more people believing in "genetic equality" as well. As such, I'd be very surprised if there were another nation/culture that downplayed the genetic influence on intelligence/aptitude as much as in the US, where people are taught that anyone can do anything if they want it badly enough. (e.g., "The Secret" book and dvd's)
I agree that some forms of intelligence must be able to be learned, in the sense that it may involve employing the right algorithm (NlogN rather than N^N). There must be a software component involved that can be updated and accelerated through experience. In fact, that seems to be what experience is.
Even if there is an absolute physical property of the brain that we could call intelligence, it would be foolish to think we could measure it through the results of a pencil and paper test.
The author is rebutting feel-good pop psychology, which I suppose needs to be done for balance, but you can't argue with the achievement gap, and there are solid studies showing that praising kids for "working hard" leads to better achievement than praising them for "being smart."