TALK TO Scottish secondary teachers in deprived areas and they'll lament how youngsters say they can't do something before they've even tried. Look at the figures and you'll find that the numbers of disengaged young people is higher in Scotland than equivalent countries.

Research by Professor Carol Dweck from Stanford University may help us understand why. Her empirical research shows that there are two mindsets about achievement. The fixed mindset believes people are either clever, musical, good at football or they're not. The growth mindset, by contrast, accepts that some people are born with more innate ability but still believes that any motivated, hard working individual who is taught well can improve. In fact, the supposedly untalented can end up being better than the ones showing early promise.

Growth mindset ideas are upheld by research that shows the brain is not fixed but malleable. Learning changes the brain. Practising a musical instrument, for example, makes the part of the brain controlling the fingers thicker and stronger. These are the types of ideas we need to counteract the notion that we're dealt a hand at birth we can't change.

Dweck's work also shows how these mindsets affect attitudes to failure. Growth mindset people see failure as simply where they are in the learning process. Not doing well can make them work harder. But for fixed mindset people failure means you don't have what it takes to succeed. This can be such a blow to the ego that people often opt out of learning and don't even try. Psychologists call this self-worth protection and this may be what teachers see frequently in Scottish schools.

Fixed and growth mindsets can be found across the world but is there something about Scotland which predisposes us to the fixed mindset?

In The Wee Book Of Calvin, Bill Duncan inadvertently argues this may be the case. He distils the essence of Calvinism into the idea that individuals are unchangeable. "Ye can tell the criminal frae the face in the crib" reads one humorous aphorism. "His name's doon in the book o' no rubbin' oot" reads another.

The Calvinist legacy for Scotland isn't all negative but isn't it time we realised that judgmental views can lead not just to feelings of worthlessness but also to a terrible waste of Scottish potential?

Professor Carol Dweck is speaking at events in Glasgow on September 18