Due to the success of Paul Tough’s book “How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character,” the corporate reformers seized on the idea that what is needed for academic success is not just strict discipline and constant test prep, but GRIT. Grit, meaning perseverance.
As Alfie Kohn writes, the original interest in noncognitive skills focused on emotional intelligence.
He writes:
“Education experts have long known that there is more to success — in school or in life — than cognitive ability. That recognition got a big boost with science writer Dan Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence in 1996, which emphasized the importance of self-awareness, altruism, personal motivation, empathy, and the ability to love and be loved.
“But a funny thing has happened to the message since then. When you hear about the limits of IQ these days, it’s usually in the context of a conservative narrative that emphasizes not altruism or empathy but something that sounds suspiciously like the Protestant work ethic. More than smarts, we’re told, what kids need to succeed is old-fashioned grit and perseverance, self-discipline and will power. The goal is to make sure they’ll be able to resist temptation, override their unconstructive impulses, and put off doing what they enjoy in order to grind through whatever they’ve been told to do. (I examined this issue in an earlier essay called “Why Self-Discipline is Overrated.”)
“Closely connected to this sensibility is the proposition that children benefit from plenty of bracing experiences with frustration and failure. Ostensibly this will motivate them to try even harder next time and prepare them for the rigors of the unforgiving Real World. However, it’s also said that children don’t get enough of these experiences because they’re overprotected by well-meaning but clueless adults who hover too close and catch them every time they stumble.”
Grit is the new term for an emotional disposition to comply, obey, do the job no matter how unpleasant. Persevere.
Now, perseverance is a good trait. Teachers have always taught children to persevere. But the US DOE is now trying to figure out how to measure grit. Another opportunity to measure, rank, and rate kids.
A few months ago, Paul Tough wrote a gripping story about a commercial fisherman who fell off the boat at 3 a.m,, with no life preserver, forty miles from land. It was a cover story on the Néw York Times magazine. The man ingeniously came up with strategies of survival, and he miraculously stayed afloat until he was found by a helicopter rescue team.
I sent an email to Paul to tell him how much I enjoyed reading the story. I added, “that guy really had grit, but how were his test scores?” Paul responded that he did indeed demonstrate grit, and he doubted his test scores were very high.
What can we learn from this story?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My definition of grit from the Education Reformers Dictionary.
grit – the kind of dogged determination required to sit through a David Coleman demonstration of close reading.
lol
LOL!
Specifically, sitting through the demonstration of close reading the Gettysburg Address, which seems to be the only model presented to secondary school teachers. I’ve seen in 4 times already in various CC trainings.
Can you make sense of the Gettysburg Address with no knowledge of context, time, place, reason?
Thank you for this posting; the Fordham Institute has a fellow “Martin West” who turned out a so called “Boston” study that went directly to NAEP governing board. It is in the same grouping of studies with the “so called Gabrieli/MIT” study. I tried to point out the connections when the study first came out. The Martin West component looked at grit; it is a “fuzzy ” concept and they used some informal (made up) measures of “grit” on scales that have no proven reliability or validity. If this is still “lab” science that is experimental, why is Fordham Institute submitting the study to NAEP governing board through David Driscoll as fait accompli and we should now be measuring “grit” or other personality variables of students? These people have set the whole psychological testing and edcucational assessment fields back by 2 generations.
The wealthy are allowed to fail with plenty of nets to catch them. A type of affluenza where “grit” is an fashion accessory. The middle class and poor get no second chances and must work hard to tread water in a sea of grit.
What we can learn from this story is that EXPERIENCE matters. Imagine if all high school students graduated high school with a semester long project out of the classroom along side their academic work where they can practice, with an safety net, those skills necessary to figure out complex problems which may not have a right answer and self discipline, awareness, and reflection.
There is such a program in @ 60 high schools that has done just that for 40 years. It is called the WISE (Wise Individualized Senior Experience), and I am proud to have worked with students in several schools who have it.
It was created and is run by teachers and former teachers who still have the passion it brings out in all concerned. Interested? http://www.wiseservices.org
I believe that is what Tough and Kozol were referring to as a means to a gritty end.
Kohn too.
From The Devil’s Dictionary of Corporate Education Reform:
Grit (n): the ability to perform tasks, no matter how meaningless, tedious or absurd, efficiently and without question.
Also known as, not only taking s&%#, but having to eat it.
case closed.
Absolutely. Now our task is to inform everyone that control of the message and policies by the privileged is a matter of class warfare that is being waged by elites against lower income and middle income working class people, regardless of the civil rights lingo & euphemisms they use as smoke screens to mask their true intentions.
Use social media to spread the truth and encourage civil disobedience, such as tonight’s campaign, sponsored by the Students United for Public Education (@supenational), which is intended to storm Twitter with #ResistTFA tweets.
From the Rheformish Lexicon:
grit n. Ability to persist in assigned task no matter how much it alienates one from one’s own interests, from pride in or enjoyment of the results of one’s own labors, or from peers asked to demonstrate such persistence, an essential 21st-century work skill to be measured via galvanic skin response bracelets and retinal cameras and recorded, in real time, in the national database. See Total Information Awareness and Rigor.
What a wonderful world it would be if Alfie Kohn had the kind of influence that Gates, Rhee, etc. do.
Regrettably the people currently running the world are very clear thinkers with little taste or capacity for complexity. Kohn would fry their small mechanical brains.
One of the interesting contradictions marking this period of history is that while one wing of our elite allegedly wants public school students to demonstrate more “grit,” another wants teens in general to satisfy their needs more immediately by consuming as much as possible in the way of clothing, beauty products, popular culture and so on. On the other hand, the New York Times reported recently that with income stagnant or dropping among the four bottom quintiles of U.S. society, stores targeting those segments are closing and being replaced more others more oriented to wealthier clients. This raises the question of whether admonitions about grit or are being made with the expectation that they will create more skilled, productive citizens or whether they are the essentially another way to justify inequality and blame its victims.
I have been troubled by this massive hypocrisy in our culture, too. Pathetically, however, I don’t see two wings, but a left hand denying what the right hand is doing. So many of these “reform” elites made their money (and continue to do so) promoting a vapid, brutal and relentless consumerist culture.
I also read recently that the restaurant business is having the same problem. Expensive, high-class restaurants are doing great business. Low-end, fast-food restaurants are doing well. Mid-priced restaurant chains, the Olive Gardens, Red Lobsters, and Appleby’s of the world which the middle class patronize, not so much!
The “discovery” of grit is a rehash of the age-old debate which Dewey addressed in his work titled: Interest versus Effort in Education (1913). Dewey’s conclusions are far more instructive than the present conversations on the question.Not to spoil Dewey’s conclusion, but the sailor who survived at sea, quickly understood that answering the question as an either-or choice would have been fatal.
quote:
“We used surveys to gather information on a broad set of non-cognitive traits from 1,368 8th- grade students attending Boston public schools and linked this information to administrative data on their demographics and test scores. Scales measuring students’ Conscientiousness, Self-control and Grit are positively correlated with test-score growth between 4th- and 8th- grade. Yet students who attend over-subscribed charter schools with higher test-score growth score lower, on average, on these scales than students attending district schools. Exploiting admissions lotteries, we replicate previous findings indicating positive impacts of charter school attendance on math achievement but find negative impacts on these non- cognitive traits. We provide suggestive evidence that this paradoxical result is an artifact of reference bias, or the tendency for survey responses to be influenced by social context. Our results therefore highlight the importance of improved measurement of non-cognitive traits in order to capitalize on their promise as a tool for informing education practice and policy.”
I want the NAEP (David Driscoll) and the Fordham Institute to stay out of this area; I don’t want them using “non-cognitive” personality traits definitions that are “fuzzy” with poorly designed questionnaires. When I work with a parent going to an IEP meeting I tell the parent: “The school is not allowed to comment on your child’s personality; tell them you want information on the educational goals and objectives and the child’s academic achievement”…. I don’t want David Driscoll telling the commissioners that NAEP is going to use fabricated questionnaires to measure OCEAN (the personality measures most frequently discussed in the reserch literature) and I certainly don’t want them measuring something called “grit”…. that is what I cookd for breakfast with eggs.
For those who have frequently seen my comments: the only research study I support is the one by Deborah Waber at Boston Children’s Hospital when she describes MCAS in light of what we know about working memory and the unique students that we work with from day to day… I trust her judgment on psychology/psychiatry. I do not trust NAEP, Fordham Institute or this Martin West fellow paid by Gates money to do this so called “study”…
GRIT (Great Resolve If Threatened) is useful in the short term, but is debilitating if resorted to over a longer period of time. The bastards will wear you down if given the opportunity. Civilizations have practiced GRIT over the entire history of the human race. Our country is no different; just look at how the bastards won the West: even though the original inhabitants had great resolve, they had neither the immune systems nor the technology to ward off the threat. Back to the future: Unfortunately Paul Tough falls into the same intellectual trap as those who would incorporate GRITTY experiences into a child’s education. Advocates have generalized what is useful short-term behavior into a long-term strategy. As I have said, the consequences are not beneficial to the practitioner for health reasons: either through endogenous or exogenous influences. WHAT IS REALLY NEEDED is a long-term strategy that will succeed, especially in a learning environment. That strategy is FAILURE (not an acronym). Kids need permission from their mentors, and especially from themselves, to fail over and over again while learning a new skill. It is natures way; it should be our way given our natures. Failure teaches us unsuccessful tactics, leading to a successful strategy. Our current educational process abhors failure like a vacuum. So much so that each failure is recorded in a permanent record of each child’s educational experiences – these records are called GRADES (also not an acronym). I believe in subject mastery, but I also believe that an individual seeking mastery should be given the opportunity to overcome their failures to achieve that mastery, and in the process build a sense of self esteem that will inspire and motivate them to continue learning. Forget Paul Tough [sic]; read Tim Harford instead (“Why Success Always Starts with Failure”).
This is true. It is uniquely punitive to record failures on people’s permanent records. I am not sure this is practiced in other countries.
We used to have an age of grit for children:
JT Gatto writes, “To mention just a few other radical changes in children’s book content between 1890 and 1920:school credentials replace experience as the goal book characters work toward, and child labor become a label of condemnation in spite of its ancient function as the quickest, most reliable way to human independence-the way taken in fact by Carnegie, Rockefeller and many others who were now apparently quite anxious to put a stop to it.”
The Underground History of American Education
The KIPP school gives students a score in grit as well as an academic score. When they did research on which students did well in college it was not always the students who did the best academically. KIPP then found the grit scale, developed by Angela Duckworth a psychologist in order to test candidates for West Point. West Point, too found that they needed other ways to see which candidates could endure and thrive at West Point. Thus students at KIPP get grit scores and academic scores. These scores evidently help students to measure their capacity to persevere and delay gratification which leads to college success.
Hardly an educational experience that we would want most students to emulate.
jfraad: are you pointing this out or recommending it? (Which)
I am opposed to the way that Martin West measured it; but that sutdy went direct to NAEP and the governing board of NAEP and it will be in the schools tomorrow; I expect, in places like Louisiana where the “career” ready are to be the “work force” that will apply grit to build more profits (while the public school funds are drained off as the Louisiana J. White and B. Jindal would prefer)….
This is how Martin West (Gates$ money at Harvard ) measured “grit”
quote:
“Like all measures, questionnaires have limitations. Most obviously, questionnaires are subject to social desirability bias (to seem more attractive to observers or to oneself) and faking. When endorsing a survey item such as “I am a hard worker” a child (or her teacher or parent) might be inclined to choose higher ratings. To the extent that social desirability bias is uniform within a population under study, it can alter the absolute level of individual responses but not their rank order. ”
So when he doesn’t get the results he wanted he says the “students lied” about how hard they work….
please, folks , read the Martin West/NAEP/governing board study of Boston students. This is “phony research” with Gate$$$ money behind it and it they send it out of “HARVARD/Cambridge to try to push it as authoritative.
Even fools should know that you can’t manufacture grit, self-esteem, confidence, etc.
These traits come naturally with growing up over a long period of time—if they develop at all. Attempting to develop them through artificial means will backfire as the self-esteem parenting movement did by raising a generation of narcissists.
The closer one looks at the idea of grit — the research cited to support its importance and the political and educational implications of the idea — the more reason there is to be skeptical about this latest fad in our field. I discuss this in some detail in my book “The Myth of the Spoiled Child,” due out next month. The problem isn’t limited to the preoccupation with measurement; the concept itself is troubling.
The story of the fisherman’s survival was a testament to his resourcefulness and also to luck. Of course he, like anyone, was desperate to survive. Training in grit wouldn’t help someone in that situation.
Hear, hear, Alfie!
And thanks so much for coming HERE!
I look forward to your new book, Alfie!
well said, Alfie!
Thanks to all that have commented. Food for thought.
Please excuse this very long comment.
More and more I have come to the conclusion—reluctantly, because it is painful to think so—that what self-styled “education reformers” mean by “developing grit and determination will make you better, smarter and stronger” is “enduring deprivation without complaint will make you docile, obedient and subservient even when you are being abused.”
Caveat: with the proviso that it applies only to OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
When it comes to THEIR OWN CHILDREN, just gaze with astonishment at Harpeth Hall [think Michelle Rhee]:
Link: http://www.harpethhall.org
Academic offerings are mixed in with field trips, enjoy the visual arts & performing arts, there is a teaching gallery of art and an international exchange program [S. Africa, Germany, France, China and New Zealand] and…
Well, picking up on the last, they also have something called “Winterim”:
[start quote]
Begun in 1973, Winterim is a three-week program of on and off campus opportunities meant to broaden the intellectual horizons of our students. Taking place every January, Winterim has become a hallmark of Harpeth Hall’s innovative curriculum.
[end quote]
And just what do they “waste” time on during this so-called “Winterim”?
[start quote]
Winterim offers students the very best in experiential learning, creating for them a chance to see their academic studies take a tangible, dynamic form. They are immersed in environments where they use language skills during a home stay in France or Argentina, math skills to design a model home, analytical and science skills in a Cryptography course, or writing and communication skills at a local or national news station.
During Winterim, juniors and seniors have traveled to Argentina, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Qatar, South Africa, and Spain. These academic trips and cultural exchanges have fostered a deeper understanding of the world and the world’s needs.
In New Zealand, students studied marine biology, ecology and native cultures while participating in service learning. In Japan, students studied the art and culture of that country, in South Africa, students were immersed in service learning and issues of global poverty. In England, Greece, and Italy, students experienced the rich history and culture of civilizations that have so impacted and shaped our own American heritage. In Argentina, France and Spain, students were immersed in the language of the three countries during home stays and while interacting with their exchange hosts at local schools in Bonpland, Paris and Malaga.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.harpethhall.org/podium/default.aspx?t=151822
So for THEIR OWN CHILDREN, enriched and appropriately varied offerings at all levels of interest and ability.
RIGOR that builds the kind of genuine self-confidence and independence that leads to success in later life. *Addendum: shaped by real teachers with experience and expertise.*
For OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN in public schools, they cut and eliminate the arts, PE, vocational, music, recess, and on and on, in favor of endless test prep and drill-and-kill instruction by the curricular bullet list.
RIGOR MORTIS that stunts the growth of self-confidence and leads to meager or no success in later life. *Addendum: wherever possible, provided by education delivery specialists who will TeachForAwhile and then quickly move on to their “real” careers.*
Voldemort would be so proud of them.
The rest of us, not so impressed…
😎
‘More and more I have come to the conclusion—reluctantly, because it is painful to think so—that what self-styled “education reformers” mean by “developing grit and determination will make you better, smarter and stronger” is “enduring deprivation without complaint will make you docile, obedient and subservient even when you are being abused.” ‘
What you said and not just about kids. Millions of Americans are surviving on grit and determination now. The rich are busy finding more ways to claim more of the pie while dismissing the rights of anyone who is not at the top of the pecking order. So now they make education about test scores?! I am so tired of being tired, and I have had it easy compared to most people. If you are willing to kick and claw your way to some imagined top, you are somehow better than those you abused on the way up? This way of thinking disgusts me.
I had a similar experience when I was about 13. The small sail boat that my 14 year old old sister and I had rented from our hotel, on the west coast of Florida, capsized far from shore in the Gulf of Mexico. We’d been sailing at camp for years and had gone out far on the Gulf to capture the wind, but we’d learned on a somewhat small fresh water lake and the salt water Gulf was new sailing territory for us.
We had been trained at camp to not waist our strength trying to right the boat after it capsized, and to climb up on the hull instead, and stay with it, so we could be readily seen and rescued. But trying to climb on the hull was too challenging for my overweight sister, and I was taking in too many mouthfuls of salt water in my efforts to help her. Ultimately, we decided to abandon the boat and save ourselves, even though we had no equipment or life vests with us.
We were so far away that we could only just barely make out very small images of buildings on the shore, but that’s where we aimed. We had both been swimming since we were about five years old, but my sister felt more confident in her crawl stroke than I did. Years earlier, I had been involved in a swim-the-lake event that overwhelmed me, and to get through it, I had figured out that I could keep moving forward, gain strength and avoid taking in gulps of water by periodically switching my positioning and my strokes, from front to back and side, and I resorted to that again in the Gulf. I recommended that my sister do the same when she got tired and we coordinated our efforts, so that at least one of us kept their eyes on the buildings on the shore while the other was on their side or back.
Eventually, we made it safely to shore. It turned out to be best that we had tried to save ourselves, because no one came out to rescue us, even though my mom asked for help from the hotel. It was a long, harrowing experience for two young adolescents and, while some may say we showed grit, I think that’s just a strong instinctive will to survive –and one which is really very difficult to deny.
More importantly, we had skills, related experience, implemented team work and we had the ability to break with convention and be creative as necessary. There was nothing easy about this experience, but during the long trek to the shore, I remember thinking and repeatedly saying that we would survive it, due to all of our strengths. Try teaching and testing those qualities, instead of the innate will to survive.
We psychs have a useful construct the ‘fundamental attribution error’. It means the tendency to give too much weight to factors internal to the individual when explaining behaviour etc. it’s an error because situational variables are often or even usually of more explanatory value. The FAE is a feature of competitive individualist cultures and less in evidence in more collectivist cultures.
So we are at again, trying to find the attribute of an individual that will explain everything.
Seriously it makes more sense to find the situational factors that foster gritty behaviour. Fat chance, however.
I don’t see FAE in the post… would you want to describe how it is represented in the culture and what the initials stand for? I see fundamental attribution error above but it would help me as a reader if you would put in place “fundamental attribution error (FAE)”… but I am also interested in how it is evidenced in the culture as you describe (I am not disagreeing with you just wanting more clarification)…. Are any of the “psychs” helping teachers with understanding the way that tests are being used (in my opinion to punish teachers and students)? I don’t think the APA (American Psych Association) guidelines ever indicated that was a purpose of testing. As I have said previously on this blog the current fiasco with expensive, experimental tests is setting the whole testing field (education or psychology) back about 2 generations…. — if I am going in to give a “test” to a child in the future I would expect a response from the student similar to PTSD (post traumatic stress)… maybe that’s why a test manual says “we are going to play some games” when the student doesn’t understand he is taking a high risk assessment . Again, I’m not criticizing you as an individual just saying the teachers need more information and support from the “psychs” as to the harm … The only person I have found who is saying anything is Deborah Waber at Boston Children’s Hospital. She indicated 5th grade students were having more anxiety with tests because they had taken similar tests in 4th grade and suffered consequences….
“What can we learn from this story?”
In addition to grit, I’ll add Self-Efficacy and Common Sense. Learning how to take high stakes tests doesn’t prepare you for the unexpected tests that life throws at us.
Mom always instilled having good common sense. Dad thought us how to improvise. It sure helped me to be independent at an early age.
Students these days are always depend on us for the answers (“How do you spell…?” “What does ….mean?”, “Is this the right answer?” etc.) I always say, “Go look for it before you come and ask me.”
Social Growth on reports cards should be more important than subject grades in my book. Guess the reformers can’t find a way to make money on that idea.
No, the key issue now is that they are already working on how to make money off this idea –through testing.
As indicated by Diane this month, someone recently “said he had just attended a meeting with White House officials and Department of Education officials about how to develop metrics to measure qualities like grit and determination.” https://dianeravitch.net/2014/02/05/clarifying-the-washington-post-account-of-what-i-said-in-d-c/
Thanks Cosmic Tinker. I missed that. That does want to make me throw up too. How absurd!
Whether called grit, resilience, or perseverance— the study and potential measure of it is something I welcome and encourage in the field of education.
Speaking as a veteran teacher from a large urban school district, I see daily how the “fuzzy” or “intangible” presence of grit is a key resource for students faced with social, emotional, and economic issues that could easily deter them at many junctures in their educational career from staying committed to the promise and potential education can deliver.
Why not embrace an attempt to better support our students by looking for ways to ensure they all develop and sustain grit?
Thus, I support finding metrics by which to “measure” grit and communicating with teachers about how to help build it.
Trying to dismiss measures of grit as an exercise in reducing students into subsets of data to be ranked seems to ignore the important reality, that yes, we need to know which students have doubts about their potential since it will be those responsive lessons about how to overcome these internal and external adversities which will be some of the most important lessons our students carry with them into the future.
Skilled K-8 teachers have been providing information regarding children’s social-emotional development on their report cards for decades and don’t need profit-generating “metrics” to be able to evaluate that.
That is great to read…what scales or measures have normed “skilled teachers” evaluations of students’ socio-emotional needs? Is there any longitudinal data suggesting effectiveness?
Typical response from those who think we can never subject children to too many standardized tests and who don’t trust the professional expertise of K-8 teachers.
Typical response?
Sir or Madam as a veteran educator still in the middle school classroom and remaining there because of a steadfast dedication to students, I find it unfortunate to see you have taken what seemed to be a thoughtful series of responses to a place of negativity.
Your dismissive comment about me being a typical teacher bent on over testing students is false and baseless. Yet, seeing as how quick you are not to help enlighten me about decades of previous work you cite, I will overlook this and hold out hope for more civil discourse on education in the future…we are on the same team after all.
I am not on the same team as any educator who thinks that children need MORE standardized tests and who demands research as proof of the professionalism of their fellow teachers.
E. Servillano
Do you really think that grit, resilience, or perseverance are teachable skills? And a what age does instruction begin? Would student receive a numeric grit grade? Or should we try the medical version of, “a tumor the size of a golf ball” Sure we could add to the endless stream of report card comments. The possibilities are endless.
Kaitlyn displays the grit and determination of Rocky Balboa in his rematch with Apollo Creed (Rocky II)
Sean has demonstrated the resilience of Ernest Shackleton and his crew on their escape from Antarctica
Jessica has more perseverance than a used car salesman with an overdue Visa bill
If you looked up the word “grit” in the dictionary, you would see Michael’s picture
Here’s a link to a 2013 book that describes the enormous value of persistence, hope and what some people are calling “grit.”
http://bit.ly/N5ZWfD
Some progressive public schools, district and charter, have been using something called the “Hope Survey” for a number of years to assess whether students are developing the skills this book describes. This is an example of something beyond a standardized test of academic skills that some of us think can be useful to help schools and students.
More information coming tonight.
Joe: I will definitely read it because you recommended it — very useful to think about the idea or the concept with our children, grandchildren and students. My own problem with “grit” is NAEP grabs that latest fad and conducts a study with Gates$$ money that comes out of Harvard, (so it must be authoritative, right? ) But, they (a) have a fuzzy concept of what it is as a measure — defining it so there agreement of what we are studying and, then (B) they invent a sloppy questionnaire and (c) use the public school students as “guinea pigs” to test out their “sloppy” research with poorly designed operational measures (questionnaire fabricated by people with no expertise in the field.) This is not research the way I was taught with Malcolm Provus, Michael Scriven, and others who spent their lives in educational research. If you want to see what is a decent study I recommend Deborah Waber’s work from Boston children’s hospital ; she looks at high stakes testing in light of the research we know on working memory and it doesn’t get into the child’s personality. For general information on “grit” look at Scott Barry Kaufman’s book entitled “Ungifted” (yes that is a dumb title — the authors often don’t assign titles like the journalists don’t get to write their headlines)… Also, in reading UNGIFTED on “grit” look at his chapter on “deliberate practice” which is more relevant for the teachers’ work with students. I don’t accept evertyhing Kaufman says about “grit” but he does try to help build the concept so it is less “fuzzy” …
So a no-excuses military style charter chain for poor K-12 children of color says it wanted to promote college success and they looked to an actual military school, which teaches students at the college level, for guidance? Interesting choice. Why didn’t they look at regular colleges? Are they aiming to create obedient soldiers or creative and critical thinkers?
Or are they aiming for compliant inmates, as suggested by the KIPP students who say that KIPP stands for the “Kids in Prison Program”? KIPP has students wear shirts that say. “Don’t eat the marshmallow,” ostensibly to teach self-control and delayed gratification. That’s eerily similar to the Reagan’s “Just say no” campaign against drugs, and this is what that got us:
“…imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Quintupled, in fact. The main driver has been the War on Drugs. Drug offenses alone accounted for about two-thirds of the increase in the federal inmate population, and more than half of the increase in the state prison population between 1985 and 2000, the period of our prison system’s most dramatic expansion.”
“The New Jim Crow: How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste” by Michelle Alexander
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/27
This reminds me of Deming: “Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.”
I coached a teacher and her assistant in a classroom that had slogans all over the walls and ceiling which children had to dutifully recite daily. There was no space left in the room for posting children’s work. This was a very rigid environment and truly the most oppressed classroom of children I have ever seen. They were 3 and 4 year old poor children of color. I got support from the school system to make significant changes in there. What will happen in unregulated military style charters that want PreK?
Back in the 1980s during my first decade as a teacher, I remember hearing in the news that President Reagan had publicly stated that there were no homeless in America, but as I drove to work each day, I saw them standing with their cardboard signs asking for anything. Was I hallucinating?
In addition, the last movement that used slogans to brainwash kids was started with Mao’s Little Red Book and concluded with China’s Cultural Revolution 1965 – 1976. Millions died, churches and monasteries were destroyed, teachers and school principals were denounced and tortured. Many committed suicide.
After Mao died, the other leaders who pulled the strings behind the Cultural Revolution and who planned to lead China and continue the insanity, were arrested, tried and sentenced to death. Then China opened its doors to the world, but China had a lot of work to because in 1976, literacy—-thanks to the only textbook was filled with slogans children were forced to memorize (or else)—had plummeted to 20% of the population.
My wife was one of those children. She memorized all of Mao’s Red Book because reciting those slogans saved her from beatings from Mao’s teenage Red Guard who ruthlessly ruled urban China. I you couldn’t recite those slogans, you had to be corrupt.
Time to dig out the Reformy to English Dictionary again.
Grit (noun): A quality that helps upper-middle class children survive their difficult private school upbringing and to secure a legacy spot at an Ivy League school. Also, the quality that encourages children of privilege to drop out of school and borrow money from their parents’ friends to start a Fortune 500 company in the garage. Grit is the quality that allows a person to pull himself up by his bootstraps from the 1% to the 0.01%.
If you watch this video, you will see that grit means nothing more than passion and perseverance for a long term goal. I read Tough’s book and Alfie’s Kohn’s article linked above. And I think after reading all this, you don’t have to be suspicious about grit just because some reformers advocate for it.
I see it with my own children. My older son, who has the native intelligence and the high test scores, was not motivated by the tasks he was asked to do in school unless the subject interested him. Yet in college, he is pursuing his passion to be a musician with a singular focus. Classic Alfie Kohn.
My younger son has ADHD with all the attendant Executive Function problems, one of which is he has poor working memory which results in difficulty in keeping the future in mind. Hard to persevere when you can’t keep long term goals in mind.
But for the average kid, according to this woman and the studies she conducted, kids that have less natural ability than my older son and don’t have the special needs of my younger son, in other words, an average student, can do better if they practice grit.
And the end of this talk, she has the answer to the problem that Alfie poses regarding the deleterious effect of repeated failure. She identifies something called growth mindset. She says if you teach students the idea that the brain can change and grow in response to challenge, they can learn from failure and grow from it not be defeated.
Interested to see what others think.
[…] It’s true that young people report higher rates of mental illness than older adults, but maybe there’s more at work here than younger generations’ supposed lack of grit. […]