The comments on this blog are often a source of enormous common sense. How can you teach what you can’t define?
Reader Ponderosa writes in response to the debate about teaching grit:
The mania for teaching grit exposes a broader problem in American education. We’ve developed this habit of identifying some valuable abstract quality –grit, critical thinking, problem solving ability –and assume: a. that it’s teachable; and b. that we really know how to teach it, without any strong evidence that these are true. Then we devise programs that purport to teach these things and everyone assumes, simply because they’re called “Teaching Grit” or “Teaching Critical Thinking” that they actually are doing these things. Look, we know how to teach geography and chemistry and Spanish. There is no doubt about this. But once we get beyond teaching concrete knowledge, we’re in fog –where charlatans frolic because nobody really knows what’s going on and, while nobody can say for sure that what they prescribe does work, nobody can say for sure it doesn’t work either. It’s hard to discredit the charlatans when they’re dealing with such fuzzy and etherial stuff. That’s why charlatans still abound in the realm of religion. My view: let’s teach the concrete stuff, the stuff we KNOW we can teach, with creativity and joy and rigor. I bet the other stuff will fall into place. But if we just try to teach the fuzzy and etherial stuff, with just a haphazard smattering of the concrete stuff, we risk not giving kids much of anything real in their school years.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As a former high school teacher and now a professor, I would say that every teacher is already implicitly teaching perseverance, problem-solving, and other soft skills. Teachers do this through the way in which they communicate with and motivate students. They do these through the type of assignments they expect students to complete. They do this through their grading practices. These are all part of the implicit rather than explicit curriculum. When I was a teacher, ensuring students learned how to learn, communicate, persevere, collaborate, and meet expectations were at least as important as teaching them the mathematics curriculum. If teachers are NOT responsible for such things as the reader suggests, then teaching becomes nothing more than pouring knowledge into an empty vessel. If that is our view of teaching, then cyber schooling should suffice–and clearly it does not.
I strongly encourage the reader to be more reflective of her practice and start to examine how her behaviors, words, assignments, and grading support or do not a variety of non-cognitive outcomes that students, parents, and teachers generally value.
And to be clear—I am DEFINITELY NOT saying that teachers should be held accountable in these other areas. I am simply saying that teachers have always taught these non-cognitive outcomes and always will, so we should think about how we can best do that while also ensuring students learn the explicit curriculum as well.
Dr. Fuller,
Forgive me, but what you written feels like just the kind of fog bank that I worry about. To justify ourselves to others and ourselves, we teachers surround ourselves with foggy pretentious cliches like “ensuring students learned how to learn” without ever specifying how we did it or whether we really did it at all. Maybe, maybe not. Are you sure your students didn’t know how to learn before your class? Maybe learning how to learn is something the brain is built to do. Are you sure they knew “how to learn” after your class? What’s the proof? Will you at least acknowledge this is a foggy realm, and that the cliched language we use to talk about these things may obfuscate reality?
Teachers resort to this fuzzy stuff because we don’t believe in the value of the concrete stuff. We’ve been brainwashed to denigrate it. Your slur against teaching knowledge is a perfect example: it’s “nothing more than pouring knowledge into an empty vessel”. Take out the “nothing more”. Knowledge is power. Knowledge of phonics and words is what enables you to read (metacognitive skills is only a small part, and most of these are built-in to the brain from birth). Knowledge of humans and finance helps you avoid getting preyed upon by grifters. Knowledge of concussions helps you avoid brain damage. Knowledge of America and our political system and history helps you become a good citizen and informed voter. Knowledge of nutrition, cooking and diet helps you avoid diabetes, obesity and tasteless food. Knowledge of the environment helps avoid a lifestyle that harms the environment. Knowledge of technology architecture helps you get high paying jobs in Silicon Valley. Won’t you admit this knowledge is good to have –and that schools can impart it? Let us pour knowledge into students’ heads –it will help them for sure. I’m not at all sure that “teaching them how to learn” is even possible. It may be a waste of time. By teaching them knowledge, aren’t you proving they already know “how to learn”? And you’re giving them something of indisputable value in the process.
ponderosa:
I didn’t denigrate the power of knowledge at all. Obviously I think knowledge is at the core of our profession. But, I believe teachers do far, far more than teach the content knowledge in their classes.In fact, it doesn’t matter if you set out to teach anything other than the content knowledge in your classroom–your words, non-verbal behaviors, types of assignments, grading policies, and expectations for students ALL influence what students learn in your classroom other than the stated curriculum. This is true with regard to any human interaction. We learn from interacting with other human beings–we are constantly learning. This is simply not disputable.
As for learning how to learn, I explicitly set out to teach my students how to ask themselves questions in a manner similar to the Socratic method as a strategy to determine what they knew and what they didn’t know and how certain facts led to other facts. This allowed the students to learn how to solve the problems we had to tackle in class. By the end of the year, they could verbally explain to me the conversation they were having in their head in their quest to solve the problem. In essence, they had learned a strategy about how to solve problems–in other words, they learned how to learn.
Finally, if you see your job as only presenting knowledge to students and then it is the students’ responsibility to simply absorb that knowledge, then you are only doing one-half of your job. Viewing teaching as simply presenting knowledge denigrates the high level of knowledge and skill it takes to be a high-quality teacher. Almost anyone can present knowledge–only a few can actually teach.
“They do this through their grading practices.”
No, they don’t as “grading” practices are a bogus, falsehood of educational malpractice that the students see right through, especially those who aren’t “graded” on the upper end of the scale. Grading practices teach the students that society accepts inane and insane practices–hmmm, maybe that’s a good thing.
“I am simply saying that teachers have always taught these non-cognitive outcomes”
Ah, the unspoken and unwritten curriculum that cannot be avoided.
You got it, Duane. Teachers implicitly teach soft skills. What we don’t need is someone’s grit curriculum imposed upon us.
“I didn’t denigrate the power of knowledge at all. Obviously I think knowledge is at the core of our profession.”
It’s not obvious to me that you think this. Here’s why:
“But, I believe teachers do far, far more than teach the content knowledge in their classes.”
This implies there’s something more important than content knowledge.
“In fact, it doesn’t matter if you set out to teach anything other than the content knowledge in your classroom–your words, non-verbal behaviors, types of assignments, grading policies, and expectations for students ALL influence what students learn in your classroom other than the stated curriculum. ”
Well, yes, we’re all “influenced” by everything we experience.
“This is true with regard to any human interaction. We learn from interacting with other human beings–we are constantly learning. This is simply not disputable.”
OK. But isn’t a teacher’s job is to focus this learning on an important body of knowledge? To keep it from being haphazard. Or are you saying that all learning is equal? Is making inferences about a teacher’s personality from her non-verbal behaviors as important as learning the chemistry facts she’s trying to teach?
“As for learning how to learn, I explicitly set out to teach my students how to ask themselves questions in a manner similar to the Socratic method as a strategy to determine what they knew and what they didn’t know and how certain facts led to other facts.”
This is fuzzy to me. ” A manner similar to the Socratic method”? What exactly do you mean? It is a “strategy to determine what one knows and doesn’t know”? You’ve piqued my interest, because Socrates is one of my heroes. Socrates encountered many men who were sure they knew things, until, after being subjected to Socrates’ savvy questioning, began to realize that what they held to be true was not knowledge, but mere “opinion”. (By the way, many of these young men were victims of charlatan teachers known as Sophists). This questioning, it seems to me, stemmed from Socrates’ deep prior thinking about certain topics, (e.g. virtue and justice). They didn’t just come off the top of his head. Are you saying you can teach students to have an inner Socrates who can efficiently separate knowledge from mere opinion? Or perhaps I’m misunderstanding you.
Furthermore you claim this same strategy shows the student how “facts led to other facts”? Can you explain this part further too?
“This allowed the students to learn how to solve the problems we had to tackle in class. By the end of the year, they could verbally explain to me the conversation they were having in their head in their quest to solve the problem.”
Now I’m really flummoxed. The same strategy that teaches how to determine what you know and don’t know, and that teaches how fact leads to other facts, ALSO teaches how to LEARN to solve problems? This is a mighty strategy that I would love to learn.
“In essence, they had learned a strategy about how to solve problems–in other words, they learned how to learn.”
Is solving problems the same as learning how to learn? I have a problem: my hands are cold. I think I will sit on them while I’m not typing. I solved a problem. I’m not aware of using any strategy to do it. I’m not sure what this process has to do with “learning to learn”. Perhaps you can explain. I’m sorry I’m so slow.
“Finally, if you see your job as only presenting knowledge to students and then it is the students’ responsibility to simply absorb that knowledge, then you are only doing one-half of your job. Viewing teaching as simply presenting knowledge denigrates the high level of knowledge and skill it takes to be a high-quality teacher. Almost anyone can present knowledge–only a few can actually teach.”
It seems to me that presenting knowledge well is quite difficult. It is a craft. It’s not uncommon for me to make eight or more drafts of a lecture. I do a lot of drawings to elucidate concepts and events. In crafting my presentations I have to do research and make many choices and think hard. Don’t you agree that this is a difficult, labor-intensive craft? Do you think anyone can do this?
I so agree. Teach what is teachable. Give opportunity to think critically, but don’t try to measure or quantify or evaluate. By doing that, you are limiting that creative process and blocking critical thinking which is different for each person.
Yes, we need to know more and think more, but we need to convey information and set the learning free, not harness it and constrict it so we can collect data.
Yes. It’s ludicrous to think we as a society can just turn on a dime and directly teach or consistently elicit and sharpen critical thinking and intelligence itself, when we can’t really pin down these things in any one area, let alone across the board. You can start by shifting content toward the how’s and why’s, but you don’t pretend. Ironically, this is what children do, better.
The art of teaching itself need not be a scientific, formulaic act or a linear process. What is common knowledge is that everyone thinks and learns at their own pace in their own unique way and so, we use as many possible strategies that we can to impart ideas as well as information to students. To isolate and reduce teaching into some rote, structured model is to reduce the joyful noise of creativity inside the hearts and heads of our students. Students need to be able to think for themselves on their own and enabling our students to do that means allowing them to expand beyond the categories and designs that we create for them. Students then find meaning, understanding and knowledge to be within their grasp instead of beyond it and will start to feel a level of comfort with new material. Isn’t that what learning is all about?
You lost me at rigor…
Not properly defining terminology and then claiming to be able to measure what one has not even properly defined are sure signs of pseudoscience.
Gritology has all the markings.
You have such a way with words :). From what I’ve experienced in watching years and years of ever-shifting reforms and ever-reassigned reformers (not to mention an apparently endless flood of in-and-out consultants) the new NCLB/R2T “science” is simply that of manipulating data to fit itself to the parameters of whatever new funding become available. So now there’s funding for “gritology?” Tomorrow we’ll simply leave that behind and set up funding to test something else.
SomeDAM Poet: your point is so fundamental, yet even on this thread I can see not everyone grasps its importance or meaning…
As I see it, in part it involves WHO is doing the defining and WHY they are defining things in a certain way and WHAT purposes are well- or ill-served by their definitions.
In accordance with that snappy line from MARY POPPINS—that “Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, In a most delightful way!”—I provide a snippet from Lewis Carroll’s THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS:
[start]
‘And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’
[end]
There’s the entire argument—from the sneer, jeer and smear to the inflated claims and unfulfilled promises—of the promoters, purveyors and enforcers of corporate education reform—in a nutshell: when it comes to defining success and failure, reality and unreality, facts & logic & consistency & decency are Trumped, always, by the Rheeality Distortion Fields they inflict on themselves.
And not coincidentally, with $tudent $uccess often following close behind them…
Thank you for your comment.
😎
KTA,
Fidelity to Truth is what is lacking. Been pounding that for a while now. I hope to have more concrete writings/thoughts by the NPE conference.
You are right, KrazyTA
We have been informed that “Grit” leads to “success” — and we all know what “success” mean$, don’t we?
Aside from the definition problem, there is another huge issue: it will be abused.
This stuff always is. It’s like the people who developed SGP (student growth percentile) and made it quite clear that it was not intended to be used to evaluate teachers and schools. Guess what. It was.
No matter how many times the esteemed gritologist Angela Duckworth (PhG) says “grit should not be used to evaluate students and teachers”, it will be. Count on it. The gritsters will.
I say “nip it in the bud” before it grows into a giant beanstalk with a FE FI FO FUM giant at the top.
SomeDAM Poet: you wrote—
“we all know what “success” mean$, don’t we?”
Yes, for the leading rheephormsters, whatever makes ₵ent¢, er, makes sense. Rheeally! And with a most Johnsonally sort of ego-swelling twist to boot…
🙄
For the rest of us, not really.
One of the keys is that those promoting and ‘splaining and benefitting from self-styled “education reform” use certain key words and terms that they hope will elicit positive reactions from their prospective clients/customers, but the sellers/beneficiaries assign/insist on other meanings.
For example, “choice” is so full of bright shiny allure—but it has often proven to be the case that school staff and students and parents and their associated communities are robbed of what they consider their rights and options. Chiara puts it well: “choice but no voice.” The decisive voice belongs in so many cases with, for example, charters and their often unelected boards and distant owners. *Another example of the Golden Rule: Those that have the gold make the rules. [I saw this decades ago in a comic strip.]*
Or the vacuous claims of those that in practice—forget the words—think that all teaching and learning can be meaningfully summed up in standardized test scores as misapplied and misused in the form of VAM and SGP and so on. Yet rheephormistas do an endless series of verbal dances around their insistence, in practice, on abusing numbers & stats in order to produce results that merely confirm socio-economic status.
It goes back to two of the most fundamental features of corporate education reform: laziness and hypocrisy. When it comes to OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN, an empty number/stat that stack ranks and punishes students and school staff is just fine and dandy. But, not amazingly, when it comes to THEIR OWN CHILDREN, well gosh darn it all!, life is just so much more complex and uncertain.
This blog, 3-23-2013, “Common Core for Commoners, Not My School!”
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This is an unintentionally hilarious story about Common Core in Tennessee. Dr. Candace McQueen has been dean of Lipscomb College’s school of education and also the state’s’s chief cheerleader for Common Core. However, she was named headmistress of private Lipscomb Academy, and guess what? She will not have the school adopt the Common Core! Go figure.
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Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
Many apologies for such a long comment.
😎
Doesn’t everything start from content? But once past content, it does start to get fuzzy. They keep telling me to teach “higher order content.” But nobody can explain that to my satisfaction.
You can’t ask abstract questions without a strong understanding of the facts. And we don’t give our students enough time to master the facts.
You can ask me a question about particle physics (which I enjoy reading about- but don’t understand the math), but without a total understanding of the content, my “higher order thinking” is rather meaningless. (Thank you, professor E.D. Hirsch)
“Don’t know much” (apologies to Sam Cooke)
Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book,
Don’t know much about the french I took
But I do know that grit is true
And I know that if you use it too
What a wonderful world this would be
Don’t know much about geography,
Don’t know much trigonometry
Don’t know much about algebra,
Don’t know what a slide rule is for
But I do know that grit is true,
And if I could only measure it for you,
What a wonderful world this would be
Now, I don’t claim to be an “A” student,
But I’m willin’ to bet
That maybe by being an “A” student, baby,
I can win your love for grit
Don’t know much about history,
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book,
Don’t know much about the french I took
But I do know that grit is true
And I know that if you love it too
What a wonderful world this would be
Wow… between this beautifully written article and Matt Taibi’s piece on Trump… I am so enamored with the quality of this blog.
In the process of learning the concrete, we develop so many “intangibles” like “grit”, “critical thinking” etc… This learning is fostered by good teaching… engaging passion and interest in material being learned and sparking curiosity and creativity in students. Charlatans sure have taken a lot from the “Emperor Has New Clothes” playbook! Sadly we public school teachers are like the boy calling the emperor’s bluff but unlike the story, the corporate world just ‘holds its ears’ defiantly NOT HEARING US.
I like it when admin use terms like “grit” and “rigor”. Then I know they are either captured and/or actully believe the non-scientific dribble that some snake sold them. Funny how reform is supposed to be data driven yet they don’t actually know how to read data. Every middle schooler learns the difference between quantitative and qualitative data and how it is both unethical and unscientific to manipulate data to fit an agenda. You must let the data lead and take great steps to not let bias and low quality data muddle the findings. All variables must be as equal as possible – apples to apples, not apples to Cadillacs.
Its not dribble. Its just something that should not be measured and used to evaluate anyone. Angela Duckworth studies grit and she is the one leading the charge to not use any measures of grit in any type of evaluation. They are still working out how to collect info on grit as a way to assist educators and teachers in working together students be persistent. That should resonate with all teachers–unless you really like the kids that give up on their HW when they cant answer the first question.
My favorite: “WE know what works.”
The very definition of grit as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals” is partially tautologous because “perseverance” is a synonym for the relevant meaning of “grit.” Using a synonym of the definiendum in the definiens is usually not a good move when trying to think clearly about something.
Is there a non-tautologous definition of grit? What is it?
I watched the video posted by Dr. Fuller, but I didn’t think that Angela Duckworth said anything at all profound. Basically, perseverance is important for success. We all knew this already.
As for the original post about teaching abstractions, I liked it. Another way to think about this is that the best way to teach critical thinking or some of these other skills is not to teach them directly.
Critical thinking is best taught indirectly by teaching students math, logic, statistics, science, rhetoric, politics, philosophy, ethics, and so on. Students who study these and other topics seriously will become better and more critical thinkers.
The pursuit of these qualities is similar to the pursuit of happiness. Happiness comes from doing a variety of activities and doing them fairly well. One doesn’t achieve happiness by aiming for it directly.
Likewise, one does not develop perseverance or critical thinking by aiming directly for it.
In other words, attempts to study and teach grit in a “scientific” way will almost certainly yield no measurable results. Seems much like the “self-esteem” movement. That was a huge waste of time.
Eric,
Grit are the particles that one cleans out of the gizzards of chickens and turkeys before cooking and eating them.
Or if you’re from the south grits are a breakfast dish best served with lots of butter and some good cheese.
Bob,
You make great points. The administrators I’ve known DON’T know how to read data. This is all such folly. Why gather data if you can’t read it correctly?
“You must let the data lead”. I think this is called empiricism. I think empiricism is dead in the education realm. Dogma reigns.
If you look at the research spawned by the Marshmallow test, you will see that the GRIT is about delayed gratification, self discipline ( now called self-management) and that children can be taught and learn how to “outsmart” the temptation to “go for one marshmallow now” rather than “wait” with the guarantee of two marshmallows for waiting.
The techniques are entirely based on getting the child to figure out what will distract him/her from thinking about the marshmallow. (Don’t think of an elephant).
The kids are encouraged (by the researcher) to invent strategies that will get them the lager reward (Marshmallows are not the only treat, kids may choose from several treats).
The kids come up with different strategies. such as blocking the one marshmallow from view, thinking about a family pet instead, tapping rhythms…whatever works. These techniques have been tested in laboratory environments (rarely with several children to see if peer interactions tip this playing field).
Now of course, children are being pushed into online games with avatars, variants of self-disciplineSkinner rewards and consequences, and formal programs of “social-emotional learning.”
Just type the word Grit into your search engine to see the proliferation of “resources” marketed as teaching for grit.
Of course the grit thing is one aspect of the effort to restore character education and instill self-control and self-discpline in this generation. Dr. Angela Duckworth has a forthcoming book on GRIT and she is in charge of precedentsthe Duckworth Character Lab. You can see some of the resources there or listen to her speaking on TED.
Dr. Carol Dweck promotes the “virtues” of self-discipline, and self-control with her mindset theory and products at Brainology.com.
Then there is the organization that promotes stand-alone social-emotional learning standards and programs that include “self-management” (among other “virtues”), notably CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning.
CASEL helped Illinois develop the first state standards for social-emotional learning, and these have been raided (almost verbatim) by the American Association of School Counselors and the American Association of School Social Workers. There are similar themes in the Health standards from the CDC’s Division of Population Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.
There are federal prescedents for some of these standards and concepts–Safe and Drug-Free schools initiative, school-climate surveys, efforts to reduce truancy, anti-social behavior, bullying, prevent dropouts, entry into juvinile detention programs (or worse).
Explicit teaching puts teachers and students into discussions that once were the main province of professionals in school counselling, usually one-on-one, occasionally small groups, with some concepts overlapping health and sex education courses, and civics.
I confess to being uneasy with the trope of these standards, especially the idea that SEL– social emotional learning– should function as an explicit domain for study for school with the methods and topics “integrated” in all other subjects and activities.
I think the four sets of standards converge to honor conservative values and conformity to social norms. They also seem to be designed to exempt schools from hiring professionals in counseling and social work to address serious problems.
I must now go and practice my skills in “self-management to achieve sucess in life”…That is a lightly edited version of Goal 1, Illinois SEL standards (edited because I am no longer in school). Goal 1 is parced into A.B. and C learning strands, each with two broad “skills” to demonstrate (or describe, or apply, or evaluate). The intended skills are allocated for grade levels K-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, and 10-12. You can see all of the standards ( including some for preschool at
http://www.isbe.net/ils/social_emotional/standards.htm
“Grit” sounds like another term for perseverance. Generally, those that persevere will do better than most other students. How much is “teachable” is remains unclear. Maybe students with a lot of “grit” will be able to sit in front of computer screen all day so Bill Gates can reap a bunch of pay “grit” from his CBE. I seriously doubt that the teaching “grit” to students of generational poverty will enable them to cast off the chains of poverty, especially if they continue to live in poor, dysfunctional conditions.
” (Don’t think of an elephant).”
Especially in this presidential election cycle.
Don’t t think of a hamster , either.
Laura, these concrete facts are illuminating.
The authorities decide it would be desirable for all kids to have x. We all know the way to make this happen is to turn x into a Standard. X will therefore be “taught”. Next let us devise a test for x. Because it’s called a Test for X, we know it really measures x. If the kids score well, hurrah, the kids have x. If the kids score poorly, we need to replace those incompetent teachers. Now let’s repeat for y. And z.
Hey, we should make X “Good Judgement”. Or “Genius”. Or “Charisma”. Or “The Stuff that Makes You a Billionaire”. Make a Standard, make a Test, and, voila!, you can obtain whatever outcome you desire!
She should classify pseudointellectuality among the excessively moneyed class.
Ted Talks are quickly becoming Ted Chats — soon to be Ted Raps, and ultimately Ted Crap.
Thank you Akademos for your sense of humour. Yes, it is soon called Ted Crap. hahaha…Back2basic
Are the children of any multimillionaires learning grit in school? Are they being subjected to any standardized tests? Common Core? I rest my case.
Here’s how the mini Trumps use the “grit” they learned from their father. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tanya-young-williams/donald-trump-your-sons-lo_b_8333534.html
To LeftCoastTeacher:
To answer your question, there is a fat big YES beyond their school. “Grit” is a fancy word to misguide for ‘GREED”. It is in the children”s DNA from any multimillionaires parents.
Please watch and listen attentively Dr. Duckworth last two words: parents are greedy, their children must be “GREEDIER”, hahaha…
“. . . we’re in fog –where charlatans frolic because nobody really knows what’s going on and, while nobody can say for sure that what they prescribe does work, nobody can say for sure it doesn’t work either. It’s hard to discredit the charlatans when they’re dealing with such fuzzy and etherial stuff.”
That is because there is a lack of “fidelity to truth”. When one starts with epistemological and ontological falsehoods, foundational concepts that are based on error and half truths one can only end up with error, falsehood, prevarication, distortion and sham. And public education abounds in those fallacies and absurdities.
“That’s why charlatans still abound in the realm of religion.” Religion is the first realm of charlatans, even those supposedly in good graces of churches (apologies to A. Bierce).
Grit, critical thinking, HOTS, problem solving, the six pillars of character.
These fuzzy (empty) skill sets of test-based reform CANNOT be TAUGHT and CANNOT be TESTED and CANNOT be MEASURED.
We have zero evidence to support another FAILED reform hypothesis.
We have been wasting our student’s time pretending it is possible.
And now we have a new generation of young teachers raised with the absurd notion that teaching content knowledge is just “so 20th century”.
Knowledge is the foundation for all learning – not fuzzy skill sets.
Rage,
One of my favorite radio/podcast hosts is Norman Goldman. The express purpose of his show is to teach adults about civics and politics. He is a true (and very good) teacher. He has said he wants to “teach America to Americans.” It’s sad that he has to do this, isn’t it? Americans don’t know America –or much else for that matter –because they spend their school years allegedly learning “higher-order thinking skills” or “writing skills” or “how to learn”. Anything but facts! What lunacy has overtaken the education establishment.
Agree with nearly every one of these posts. However, some mutually exclusive propositions arise:
1. Duane tells us we can’t measure anything, anywhere, at any time. But many point out that we can never know if we are successful teaching GRIT or “critical thinking” because we can’t measure it (see RageAgainstTheTestocracy above). So which is it? Do we need to measure our success or just assume that whatever anybody does (teach content, grit or “skills”) achieves the desired goal because they say so?
2. And speaking of measuring…. are we now saying that we can measure content knowledge? Does that mean we can measure teaching success and/or effectiveness? That opens up a whole new can of worms….
Finally, Dr. Duckworth didn’t just imagine a bunch of nice theories on GRIT. She conducted experiments and analysis with such organizations as the US military. Think about. What is the primary goal of the military’s initial training programs or of most sports teams? To teach discipline, self-control, and perseverance. If you are telling me that GRIT cannot be taught, then you must be concluding that the US Marines or SEALS are unable to improve those characteristics in any of its members.
And Angele is not advocating that we test for the enhancement of GRIT. Those are steps taken by others – putting the cart in front of the horse. But the research is very clear. Discipline and focus are a huge determinant of results. You can see this by walking the campus of Harvard. You have some students pondering the meaning of life endlessly while others are applying those same talents toward an end goal. The reason why some become successful and some essentially waste their talent is why she even began investigating the topic.
I realize teachers are quick to dismiss anything that originates in scholarship circles. But just read her research. How is her proposition that GRIT affects long-term success any different than Lloyd Lofthouse espousing the determination of the poor kids who have experienced so much hardship that it taught them to be streetwise and tough? Lloyd will tell you that many rich kids don’t have that same toughness. Angela wants to find out how that can be inculcated in every student whether they are rich, shy, self-conscious, spoiled, ignored, etc. Why is that such a bad thing?
To virginiasgp/Brian:
You can disagree as much as you want to with the truth, which there is time and hash life that can inculcate people to awaken to their true GRIT.
We cannot teach adult if they do not want to learn, left alone, to teach children, Period.
People are willing to learn but their achievement cannot be successful if they CANNOT learn within a direct, practical and natural environment in life and death situation. Back2basic
Please give me a non-tautologous definition of grit that can be measured and show me the data that give strong support to the idea that the military has programs that improve grit in its recruits.
I imagine that those who finish the SEAL program already have grit. That’s a big reason for why they finish. After all, that was Angela Duckworth’s point: having grit is required for success. So, if these SEAL trainees didn’t have it already, then how did they finish the program? Again, there seems to be a bit of circular reasoning going on in these discussions about grit. How can we succeed without it, and how can we acquire it without succeeding?
Basically, all these questions about character have already been discussed at length, and in far more depth, by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and many other philosophers, but I guess they should be dismissed for contemplating the meaning of life.
I would suggest starting with Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics.”
Excellent comment, Eric. Anyone who enters the SEAL program already has grit, however you define it. No slacker would even aim for it.
Eric Brandon, look no further than their research paper to find the definition:
“working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress”
I will have to search for the hard data on the military’s programs; however, it is clear that is the purpose of their training programs. First, they demonstrate that nobody can pass certain challenges off the bat to get recruits to dismiss the notion that sheer talent or natural ability will allow them to breeze through. Then, they teach skills in simple, progressive steps to build confidence and demonstrate that complex skills can be gained in a methodical manner. Finally, team and long-term goals are prized over individual goals. The same occurs on any successful sports team.
The extent that inherent grit can be drastically changed may be an open question. The researchers are trying to conduct experiments to determine if grit can be enhanced. It’s unfair to claim that you know grit can’t be enhanced prior to the research being conducted. And while you can claim it is “common sense”, the fact that perseverance/grit has such an out-sized effect on success (greater than IQ in many college settings) is not something that is “intuitively obvious”.
Virginia, no one seeks to become a SEAL unless they already have grit. What would be measured? Physical endurance?
Captain Erikirk
I think you just sent ECONOMAD into a logic tailspin
SomeDAM Poet
Good stuff. I had forgotten about that episode.
“working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress”
This definition is very loose. How is working strenuously defined? How is it distinguished from working non-strenuously? Is it measured in terms of intensity of effort? How is that measured? How is interest measured over years? How many years? Why can’t someone show grit over a shorter period of time? How is failure defined? What constitutes adversity? How are plateaus determined? I don’t see how this definition is going to be scientific in any sense of the word.
Is confidence the same as grit? I fully agree that going through the SEAL course and passing will build confidence. But what is the relationship between confidence and grit? Is one a component of the other? Are they separate? Confidence seems more like a sort of knowledge gained by experience. Is grit a kind of knowledge? It seems like the trainees would still need grit before entering the program. The program will give them more confidence and experience; but this doesn’t mean that grit was enhanced in any way.
I don’t think confidence is exactly equivalent to grit. The best example I can provide is this research by the University of Texas. They were exploring how to support first-generation college students who had little in the way of a support network. With not much more than a few lectures informing students that this would be a rough ride with some hurdles to overcome, UT was able to significantly increase the % of its minority students who would graduate.
I hope there is a lot more research in this area. Rather than throwing $trillions at “poverty”, we need more research-based programs like this to close the achievement gap. But let’s at least wait until the researchers have told us they can demonstrate a means to improve grit before we try to rip them for trying.
Virginia, here is some news. The achievement gap is a product of standardized testing. The bell curve never closes.
Are you saying that philosophy, as an academic discipline, should not be subsidized? Why not? My students learn a lot from my philosophy courses. Where can we find the list of disciplines that should be subsidized and those that should be not? But how can we answer that question without thinking about education, politics, society, and so on. And how an we investigate those topics deeply without doing philosophy? We have worked our way back to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers once again.
Not exactly. We need not go back any further than 1980 when the great Milton Friedman explained how markets provide information via prices. In Friedman shows how prices signal market participants (workers, in this case) about where opportunities exist and the value that society places on that opportunity. It’s not just how intrinsically “valuable” an occupation is (that is a philosophical question) but rather how demand matches supply.
For example, certain jobs are more enjoyable and have intangible benefits. Astronauts have to be among the most challenging jobs yet they are swamped with applications. Based purely on skill, astronauts would be paid millions. But due to the enormous supply and small demand, they could literally charge folks to serve as astronauts. Thus, we don’t need to subsidize anyone who is seeking a college degree to serve as an astronaut. A garbage collector has the opposite position. It doesn’t require enormous skill but is a thankless and unpleasant job. Thus, we might need to pay more than the skill required.
It’s quite obvious that we have way, way more philosophy and art history majors than we need. While I will acknowledge that philosophy at least requires students to develop astute logical thinking skills, we do not need to subsidize it. Not as long as so many rich daddy’s are paying a full ride for their precious offspring to major in these disciplines. But I guess you must not have taken economics so this whole discussion is lost on you, eh?
Here is how Dr. Duckworth defines grit in the paper cited by Virginiasgp: “We define grit as perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” This is the 1st sentence of the 4th paragraph. This is the actual proposed definition.
But “persevereance” is a synonym for “grit.” So, this is a tautologous definition. This raises the question: what is perseverance? This definition explains nothing.
I looked at the paper by Dr. Duckworth that Virginiaspg linked. I skimmed it and looked at Table 1. It looks to me that this idea of grit might be more like an idea of stubbornness. One of the questions had to do with finishing whatever one begins. I don’t really know too many people like that.
All of the successful people I know are rational enough to realize when an endeavor is likely to be a waste of time compared to the reward. They then switch to a more fruitful endeavor. This is a really important quality in someone doing serious research. If one project isn’t panning out, then it is sometimes a good idea to switch to another one.
Just think of your own lives. I have abandoned many projects, but I have also completed many. I couldn’t have completed some of the important endeavors in my life if I hadn’t given up some of the other endeavors.
So, what is stubbornness or blind determination part of grit? Why? Who decided that? The conception of grit developed in this paper seems quite arbitrary.
” working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress” and “perseverance and passion for long-term goals” are not proper scientific definitions.
Among other things, they can mean many different things to different people.
And there is no unambiguous way of actually “measuring” such an ill-defined thing, despite the fact that Duckworth has claimed to have done just that (with a grit scale)
Just so much pseudoscientific nonsense.
But no real surprise that ECONOMAD would think this is real science, given his support for VAM and SGP for evaluating (and firing) teachers
We are talking about psychology, not physics here. In psychology, concepts such as happiness, personality, and political enthusiasm are regularly studied and “measured”. It is true that the correlations are much weaker than the physical sciences but unless you are prepared to dismiss every social science research construct, don’t bring me this nonsense that you get to pick and choose.
Here is what Duckworth did. They designed a scale to independently measure a person’s “grit”. They then used that self-reported grit to explore correlations with outcomes. The fact that they can predict outcomes more accurately with their grit scale than with other objective measures means that it is a real concept. You can argue that it is simply one’s perception of their own grit, but if it can be used to predict outcomes, it is real.
Of course, it’s an intuitive concept. Virtually every top sports player asserts that it is mental toughness which separates the top players, not just mere talent. The part that makes this science and philosophical conjecture is assigning a scale, measuring the reliability, and using it to actually forecast outcomes. But I guess we are supposed to defer to the “Poet” because you teach in a classroom rather than graduating at the top of her class in neuroscience from Harvard. Forgive me for ever thinking Angela was on to something. I should have asked the naysayer for the official verdict, eh?
This is the way I see it, vsgp. I cannot measure the quality of perseverance, but I can choose a behavioral task to represent it and count the number of occurrences or measure the length of time in which a student stays engaged in that behavior, and I can compare the occurrence of that behavior with the success in solving or completing some task. If performing this behavior results in success the more or the longer a student engages in it, then I can see if I can come up with interventions that will lead to a student spending more time doing it or doing it more often. The fear here is not so much that we are trying to measure an intangible but that studying behaviors that (may) demonstrate it will lead to the birth of poorly developed, rigid programs intended for a mass market. I don’t think an instructional approach has ever been developed that “works” for everyone no matter what the subject matter is. Unfortunately, the focus in recent years has been too much on scaling up one-size-fits-all initiatives. I find a lot of informal research interesting; I think it is the potential for another poorly thought out mandate that scares most teachers silly.
2old2teach, I can buy that rationale. The difference here is that those of us who believe in VAM believe we have the science to support its use. There is nobody, and I mean nobody, who claims that grit is anywhere close to this. In fact, I would argue that most agree with you that different approaches work for different students much like coaches must be hard on some players and reassuring to others.
I just take offense at the cavalier dismissal of some really important research. I dismissed much of the mass market recommendations for my kids development (e.g. Mozart for Babies). But I did pay attention to a couple of study results. The first was this notion that belief in the importance of ability/talent causes kids to be risk averse whereas belief in the importance of effort causes kids to overcome challenges. For talented kids, that means they must be challenged and praised for overcoming those challenges. If they are only provided with simple tasks to them, they grow protective of their “superior” status which can greatly impede their willingness to take on challenges later in life. I have fully bought into this research.
The second one was research showing drama was one of the few extracurricular activities that had tangible mental benefits for kids. It appears to cause kids to not only become more confident in their own skin and develop speaking skills but it allows them to see others’ perspectives more easily.
Rather than try to forecast how given research could impact a given field, I would just ask that folks remain skeptical but avoid impugning the search for knowledge outright. It contradicts our entire Western culture.
Wonders never cease. I agree with you. 🙂 This position allows me to maintain that VAM is far from ready to be used as an evaluation tool based on the current research. It also allows me to believe along with you that talent only gets you so far. I may be thinking of research used by Carol Dweck; I’m not sure, but such an approach says to the every day Joe that hard work pays off if in no other way that there is pride in doing a quality job. (I intend a broad of interpretation of what success, talent, work, job and any other potentially loaded words may convey.) I seriously doubt that anyone can come up with an example of a successful individual who was identified as having native ability (or not) who didn’t work their tails off to develop beyond dilettantism.
Congrats, Ponderosa. You have inspired a good debate. We all teach the intangibles, some of us try to make a living selling books that try to put a good word on these intangibles, packaging the ideas for sale. I think people should stop copyrighting mundane ideas and give teachers who are passionate about their subject credit for filling the class with intangibles to a good end. If you think the knowledge of a particular subject is good, and you demand that students buy into your subject, all the intangible lessons will become part of your class. This is why standards should be a discussion between passionate teachers who are seeing students, not imposed ideas from distant boardrooms filled with illisions.
To Dr. Ed Fuller:
I am not surprised about your PhD degree and Dr. A. Duckworth’s PhD degree.
First of all, I do not like to listen to most Ted Talk shows because those shows only promote GREED and all false INFO about MAKING QUICK MONEY, FAME, and INVESTMENT from crooked/puppet CEOs, or young, foolish start-up entrepreneurs with support from big DEVIOUS corporate sponsors.
However, thank you for your belief and honesty in posting Dr. A, Duckworth’s Ted Talk show clip. If she and you, both graduate from Eli Broad or Trump university, then there is nothing else I can say – I am speechless.
No, I did not have PhD degree. I have only had about 40 years’ experience with GRIT, from 4 years old to 23 years, learning theory from kindergarten to university. From 23 years old until now, I have continued to learn, work, and experience with many life and death situations. Please DO NOT mislead children that grit means to be greedy and greedier.
All greedy people are cowards, and irresponsible to their lies, and jokes in order to bully others, or to loot public education funds.
True GRIT “cannot be taught”.
True GRIT comes from intelligent, kindness, compassion and care for the well being of all sentient beings on Earth.
People with true GRIT will know how to detach their emotional and materialistic desires in order to motivate, help and lead the unfortunate to persevere in learning and helping others who are lesser than them to build a harmonious and peaceful society. Back2basic
Virginia,
I hardly think contemplating the meaning of life is a waste of time. And who is ANYONE to say that someone has “wasted their talent?” That is for the INDIVIDUAL to decide. This is the problem we get into when society sets one way of “measuring” success and it’s usually by how much money you make, how great the status you have and how much grit you’ve had to work yourself into illness, disease, depression and anxiety without contemplating what you’re doing and WHY.
Mamie, you miss the point. Nobody is saying contemplating the meaning of life is a waste of time. We are merely saying that it is a waste of our tax dollars to subsidize other’s philosophical pursuits. There are churches, online discussion groups, book clubs, universities or a whole range of venues where you can search for your own meaning. Why in the world should we confiscate private property (that is what subsidies are, the gov’t take property from one citizen to give to another under the threat of force) simply so one person can figure out life?
Virginia, did you not say above, “You have some students pondering the meaning of life endlessly while others are applying those same talents toward an end goal. The reason why some become successful and some essentially waste their talent is why she even began investigating the topic.” That is what I commented on.
“Grace”
Grit is great
Grit is good
We thank it for our fraud,
VAM them
I keep coming back to comments made by Robert Slavin, back in 1985. Slavin is director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University.
He remarked that the typical educational innovation starts with a burst of enthusiasm, followed by “widespread dissemination, subsequent disappointment, and eventual decline—the classic swing of the pendulum.”
He noted that education resembles a progressive science less than it does the fashion and design industries, which gyrate according to fads and changing tastes. Gullible principals, school boards, and even state legislatures too often jump on the latest educational bandwagons, led by charismatic proselytizers who promote their programs with unsupported or anecdotal claims.
Grit is just another one of those trendy fads. It is not the last, and there will be more.
When uttered by so-called education reformers, “grit” translates as “high tolerance for and obedience to externally-enforced tedium and absurdity, frequently administered by authorities who combine incompetence with institutional malice.”
“GRITtery” (My apology to Lars Ulrich & James Hetfield of Metallica)
Lashing out disruption, turning into corruption
Schools are fixed and thrown away
Testing student brainpower, creating money makers
GRITtery is here to stay
Smashing accountability
There’s no sanity
Cannot stop the GRITtery
Unbinding test aggression
Falling into regression
Cannot kill the GRITtery
Cannot kill the VAMity
GRITtery is found in me
GRITtery
GRITtery
Crushing public schoolers, mashing test opt-outers
Running into insanity
Hungry testing makers, feeding charter chambers
Obscene profitability
Smashing accountability
There’s no sanity
Cannot stop the GRITtery
Unbinding test aggression
Falling into regression
Cannot kill the GRITtery
Cannot kill the VAMity
GRITtery is found in me
GRITtery
GRITtery
Circle of ed deformers, billionaires and lawmakers
Buying out the BOEs
Stripping local autonomy, crippling democracy
They create the GRITtery
Smashing accountability
There’s no sanity
Cannot stop the GRITtery
Unbinding test aggression
Falling into regression
Cannot kill the GRITtery
Cannot kill the VAMity
GRITtery is found in me
GRITtery
GRITtery
GRITtery
GRITtery
GRITtery
GRITtery
And here I thought Grit was a publication hawked door to door in the 50’s. Of course in the 60’s we talked of the nitty-gritty.
The example of researchers teaching kids to delay reward (grit?) should immediately be incorporated into classes of thirty to forty.
The idiocy of the ignorant marches on! That is an example of grit. Just keep doing a failed idea until it succeeds, by god.
I would take a step outside “American education.” ‘Measuring grit’ is just one more assay at devising policy via big-number-data-crunching’– let’s call it BNDC–an issue which affects many walks of life in America today. BNDC arrived with the computer. It has been helpful in some areas. In the insurance industry, it fostered the rollback of drinking age from 18 to 21, and bolstered the formation of MADD and their success in encouraging appropriate sanctions on driving drunk. It contributed to the establishment of seat-belt laws; both policies have saved many lives.
BNDC succeeds when there are fairly-standard, physically-measurable inputs (like auto features and driver sobriety), a pressing financial need for output-based policy (devising insurance policies which synch premium price with projected payoffs), and a large, preferably national market. Clearly as we move toward national health insurance, this tool will assist us to become more output-oriented, moving away from the current model of pay-for-test/ procedure regardless of its contribution to health/ longer life.
Such practical considerations have so far proved inapplicable to education. The field of education lacks almost everything needed to make big-number-crunching an efficient tool. BNDC has shown us only that those with higher incomes achieve higher %grad rate & test-scores.
‘Inputs’ (the students) are as varied as snowflakes and their ed-potential cannot be physically measured. Ed-‘reformers’ and civil-rights groups claim there is a pressing financial need for output-based policy– but the ‘need’ is squishy. Industry once happy w/reasonably-educated hs grads for mfg jobs (now that they’ve been outsourced) claims a ‘need’ for STEM college grads when American STEM BS’s outnumber job opportunities 2-1. And even where BNDC shows policy changes are needed (as in schools in poor areas), policy rubber meets the budget road: Americans do not prize the goal sufficiently to put the $ behind those policies which BNDC shows might work (smaller classes, retaining veteran teachers).
For BNDC to be an efficient tool, one also needs a huge (I.e., national) data-base. And they keep trying for that! We’ve accommodated since the ’80’s by establishing a nat’l dept of ed. But the inputs, goshdarnit, are not std, & the states have mgd to undercut stdzn at every turn: under NCLB, they adjusted their ed-stds to their population; under RTTT & CCSS-tests, they have established varying test cut-scores & re-branded/ revised the ‘nat’l stds.
Personally I’m happy to see states find their own way despite top-down USDofEd attempts to stdz, flummoxing all efforts to stdz state ed, & at best, returning curricular decisions to the local populace where it belongs. Nat’l Ed has no place outside of attempting to enforce equal opportunity. If X state wants to go w/ anti-science stds, , let them– they will come around when they need to, to get jobs. Let them evolve at their own pace.
Meanwhile, BNDC has become an industry & is ever looking for new markets. BNDC doesn’t care whether its application is a misfit, it’s just seeking public funds for a quick profit. National ed has a target on its back– whee!– let’s try applying the studies on holocaust-survivors to kids in poor schools (surely we can convince the DOEd that street-kids are similar to Holocaust-survivors– better yet, let’s apply it to all kids in the data base! As others have noted here: today ‘grit’, tomorrow some other goal-du-jour designed by BNDC to suck up some more public $.
One measure I think should be taken pronto is to eliminate the DOEd. Its creation may once have made sense as a way to strong-arm Dixie states into providing better schools for blacks, & it proved useful to promote better opportunities for the LD & handicapped. Those functions could be maintained w/n the old Health/Ed/Welfare-dept-mode. But we need to cut off at its source the over-weening power placed in a govt agency which allows it to collect data on all American public-school students. That data-base is simply a tool for marketing.