Reader C.H. Rubinstein eases into the debate about GRIT.
Oy, where have we heard this song & dance before?
Grit is something your mom used to yell about, such as when you were playing outside,
“Wipe your feet before you come in the house, or take your shoes off! Don’t get that grit all over my kitchen floor!”
Or, as my sister would presently yell, “Who got the sink all grit-ty?! Clean it up NOW!!”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Get this grit stuff in your eye, and you will have difficulty seeing.
The last person to display grit, true grit, that is, was Ruben “Rooster” Cogburn.
YEAH!
Gates funded, and the Arne “Flunkie Dunkie” Duncan misadministration of the Department for the Privatization and Coring of US Schools (formerly the USDE) carried out a study on using retinal monitors, galvanic skin response bracelets, and other technologies for monitoring in real time students’ attention to task. (I wish I were making that up.) Gotta figure out how to do sufficient surveillance to ensure that Prole students are attending gritfully to their depersonalized worksheets on a screen!!!!
Imagine a future in which EVERY WORKER wears a chip that communicates in real time to the Social Credit system. Very important for monitoring the subservient worker bee class of the future, this. Will you be taking that latte on the verandah, Mistuh Gates?
Yolanda 48238B5, it has come to our attention that you are attending less than gritfully to your assigned tasks. Please report to Room 101 for re-education.
Welcome to the New Feudal Order. Welcome to the Panopticon.
All this stuff about GRIT is because of Michelle Obama’s book, “Becoming.” Barack and Michelle think being “Gritty” is a good thing. I TOTALLY DISAGREE with them and this is NOT the first time I disagree vehemently with them.
I DO agree with Bob Shepherd: “Get this grit stuff in your eye, and you will have difficulty seeing.” Maybe THIS is the entire point … NOT really SEEING.
Obama likes to rub progressives’ faces in the grit.
From Politico: “Back when Sanders seemed like more of a threat than he does now, Obama said privately that if Bernie were running away with the nomination, Obama would speak up to stop him.”
Hope and Change
Rub their faces in the grit
Criticize their left wing bit
Bernie really doesn’t fit
Centrist views, so “He should git!”
Obama also knocked Biden, said he was out of touch. Shameful.
Obama probably wants Kamala because her sister was a senior advisor to Hillary. Or, he may want Pete, Cory or Deval because Wall Street owns them
Reed Hastings and Bill Gates tell Barack Obama what and who he wants for the United States. In return, he gets to ride on their yachts.
So, Zucker-Buttigieg-berg is his guy.
I recently met an elderly fellow who spent 30 years working on a line at a General Motors plant, lifting carburetors off hooks and placing them on a belt. Under such conditions, of course, as Marx argued in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the worker becomes alienated from his or her product, from the value of his or her labor, from himself or herself, from other workers. But there is a problem with all this. Such alienation undermines will. That’s why fascist regimes commit such major propaganda resources to gritful service of the state–the national state or the corporate one. What was true of the 19th century industrial factor is true of the low-paying, part-time, gig economy service jobs of the present and the foreseeable future. It’s not at all surprising that the oligarchs would be pushing grit.
Grit. n. Perseverance in whatever meaningless task your betters give you, no matter how demeaning or meaningless it is to you.
Grit (n.) The stuff you put in the bottom of the bird cage for the bird to crap on.
Now, if we could take the bottom off a birdcage and glue the cage to Bill Gates’s face, he’d find out what it is like to have a face full of “grit” and bird crap.
No. I use Trump’s official Whiter House portrait for that.
In other news from the Sopranos family cartoon spinoff that is the misadministration of the Don, Cheeto “Little Fingers” Trumpbalone:
“I mean, I’ve seen things written like he’s going to throw me under the bus. When they say that, I say, ‘He isn’t, but I have insurance.’” –Gollum Ghouliani
Rudy says his insurance is a locked safe in his office with proof of decades of Biden corruption
Why go to Ukraine if he already has it?
Sounds like you have trust issues with regard to Consigliere Ghouliani, Diane. Where on Earth would THAT come from?
Ofc, I believe everything that comes out of either one of the Trump administrations.
From the Disruptors’ Lexicon:
Poverty. n. What happens when you are not gritful enough. NB: this has nothing to do with the fix being in.
LMAO–soooo good, Bob!
The Gritted Gates
The Gritted Age
Is full of grit
And Gated Age
Is full of IT:
Of Gates and grits
And tweeting twits
Behind the Gates
Are Grit Estates
I do not know what grit is, but down there in Georgia they serve grits. I ain’t too fond of’m myself, but I seen’em down south a right smart.
“I ain’t too fond of’m myself”
Blasphemy!
Are blasphemy grits better than homily grits?
Love me some grits. Or, as Northerners and Italians call them, polenta.
Recipe for polenta:
Hominy grits are ground from dried hominy, Homily grits are ground from pithy sermons.
I love grits! Very hard to find them in any restaurant in NYC!
I once worked with a ole boy from Ridgetop, TN, now swallowed up in the northward expansion of Nashville. He had such an aversion to grits that he would verbally abuse poor waitresses who would dare to offer them at a diner. He would spew forth a string of words not fit for polite society and she would recoil is a sort of combination of amazement and fear, not really knowing if he was serious or not.
Then he would order brains and eggs.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
I taught in very poor schools and we liked the words, ‘grit’ and ‘no excuses’. BUT these words were for us, the adults. So if our school had no cafeteria, no library, no computers, no gym, no district money for books and supplies. For us – the teachers, administrators, custodians, and the adults in our community – we had the resolve and the courage to find ways around these seeming problems to help our kids read, write, think and act as young academics. We, the adults, refused to make excuses to keep us from doing our jobs.
I entirely approve of adding “How to Cook Grits (aka Polenta)” to the curriculum!
Polenta, aka grits, recipe: 1 part corn meal to 4 parts hot water. Boil water. Reduce heat to medium. Pour corn meal into boiling water, slowly, stirring as you do so. Continue stirring until mixture thickens enough to pull away from the side of pot. Add seasonings (I like to add salt, salsa or jalepenos, and a vegan cheese). Pour into a dish. Cool in fridge until hardened. Slice and warm up for serving. Great as a base for various toppings, such as eggplant marinara, ratatouille, etc.
If you stop the cooking before the mixture pulls away from the side of the pan, it will end up creamy instead of solid–the way grits are typically served in the American South.
Pro tip: if you use a biscuit or cookie cutter, you can cut the cooled polenta into attractive shapes for serving.
True story: In the early 90s, there was natural foods store in New Orleans that had a large container with grits people could fill into bags. They couldn’t sell the stuff. When they changed the sign to call it polenta, they couldn’t stock enough of it.
LMAO!
I love the experiments people do where they exchange the labels and prices on wines. Very few can actually tell the difference between the good stuff and the bad. Taste is very strongly influenced by preconceptions. Does it smell like Gorgonzola or stinky feet? LOL.
I went into a restaurant down in Alabama. I ordered eggs and bacon, hold the grits. She came back with my eggs and bacon covered with this white grainy stuff. “I tried to hold the grits,” she said sounding discouraged, “But them thangs is slick.”
LMAO!!!
A warning about that polenta recipe: when this stuff gets hot, it can easily splatter from the pan as you are stirring. So, take precautions. It’s smart to wear oven gloves and goggles or glasses when stirring this stuff. LOL.
@GregB……Prunes have gone out of fashion, but dried plums are now all the rage!
No respectable Christmas pudding would be without them. But then, Christmas pudding has gone out of fashion as well.
Carpenters and woodworkers use sandpaper grit in their daily jobs. Grit is no substitute for food in children’s stomachs, access to health care or a stable roof over their heads. Grit cannot erase the scars left from years of living in poverty.
Exactly. Privileged persons like to think of their privileges as a result of their grit or intelligence, of the “good genes,” and not of their socioeconomic background, their connections, their luck, their exploitation of workers, etc. You see, they say, the reason why I am successful and you aren’t is that you weren’t gritful enough.
Tax dodgers like both grift and the grit of being born on 3rd base.
The greedy, corrupt education deformers are “grit”. Let’s vacuum them. Let’s scrub them with hard bristle brushes until their skin is raw. Let’s dunk them in lye and then boil them in water. Let’s get rid of the deformer “grit” and clean up our “house”.
I have never liked the term “grit” used in the educational discussions. Nor do I like/agree with the STEM etc. stuff. But it is the way it is.
“trending”
No. “GRIT” is grit; translated incorrectly into a John Wayne movie title espousing what “true grit” is from the false (but real meaning of the word).
Grit is grit. And I would not choose to align myself with a word describing my personality or work as gritful (full of stones).
But it’s just a word.
This year, in Strive Globally, an unfamiliar Duckworth story-
Her mother, after immigrating to the U.S., named herself after Teresa, a Catholic nun filled with “kindness”. Angela’s home while growing-up was filled with people who her mother saw in need and helped. It’s a bit different than the “up from the bootstraps” message of grit.
And, the Angela truth is…
“Grit is passion and perseverance,” she says, rolling cabbages and kings into ball and giving them a name. And gee, what an insight. People do better when they care about what they are doing enough to stick with it. In other news, scientists find that water is wet.
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+peach+was+once+a+bitter+almond&oq=the+peach+was+once+a+bitter+almond&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l2j69i
yes another about cabbages: https://www.mtpr.org/post/nothing-cabbage-college-education-cauliflower-and-brussels-sprouts
Scientists just “name” it something else. Like Pluto is not a planet: https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/item/why-is-pluto-no-longer-a-planet/
But that’s OK, isn’t it? To unlearn what we have leaned?
Change is inevitable: https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/inevitable-quotes
We all have to “get with the program”, don’t we?
Watch the last Rick and Morty episode? http://www.adultswim.com/videos/rick-and-morty/heist-con
We’re all being “heisted” over and over again.
Important to be awake, aware, and alive. Not in that order.
But we are inspired by the idea to “never give up”. https://www.google.com/search?q=never+quit+poem&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=i27CSy99m0v8EM%253A%252CJTgOMu-P0nAX9M%252C_&v
Maybe we can do that, if we can find one safe place. Is that America?
Stiegem, so, then, does Trump qualify as a planet? He regularly clears the people (whom he treats as objects around them). He approximates roundness. And he orbits the sun. QED.
HeistCON. LOL!!! In the age of Trump, I’m beginning to think that it’s all one big HeistCON.
Interesting, isn’t it, how that notion of finding the “one safe place” is so appealing. I think, for example, of the policy of data-driven stack ranking of employees that Microsoft finally got rid of in 2013 after it led to a “lost decade” of internal strife. A beautiful song.
Bob, your revelation isn’t packaged to appeal to and to get big bucks and awards from the rich. You didn’t say your message in a way that comforts those concentrating wealth. The key is, grit and passion for wealth, can be had by all. Abject poverty is not a deterrent. The wealthy shouldn’t feel badly about not paying taxes because the price we pay to live in a civilized society is the grit and passion of the select few (mostly those who start on 3rd base like Trump). A good message addition would be that fake news about the rigging of the economic and tax systems must be unfairly endured by martyrs who have grit and passion.
It is important to the billionaires to maintain the fiction that anyone can be a billionaire. That way, they can mobilize the middle class and working people to oppose raising taxes on billionaires. You, too, may one day be the billionaire….
That works. Gosh, we should have you give a TedTALK on this!
At least Marie Antoinette had good intentions if she said, “Let them eat cake.” Cake is better than dirt. Our aristocracy says, “Let them eat grit.” Seriously, blaming wealth inequality on indolence is beyond disdainful. Somewhere, there’s a real-life Madame Defarge watching. It is the best of times. It is the worst of times.
The super-rich are so ignorant they do not know how many poor people work two or more jobs to earn enough to provide shelter and food for their families.
The U.S. Census reported, “Women More Likely to Have Multiple Jobs”
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/06/about-thirteen-million-united-states-workers-have-more-than-one-job.html
Look at Trump, he thinks he works hard when he is watching Fox and Friends or Hannity. He probably exhausts himself when he writes and publishes a Tweet and thinks that it is hard work.
I also recall he compared womanizing in night clubs to be as risky as fighting in Vietnam and that he deserved a medal for that.
Marie of course was supposed to have uttered this phrase as the thousands of Parisians, led by the ladies who filleted fish and sold it, were threatening to storm Versailles. She probably never said it at all. It did, however, capture the general feeling of the nobility.
With respects to Dr. Seuss (& Some DAM–no one beats SDP!)”
I do not like the use of “grit.”
I do not like it, not one bit.
I’d rather have those “brains & eggs,”*
I’d rather have flamingo legs.**
Please do not think me being a yenta,
But grit is better called polenta.
*Creds to RT above, at 2:40 PM
** Poetic license.
(For all the sense this poem makes {& it makes none, really–hey! it could be refashioned into a Pear$on “$tandardized” te$t que$tion}, it makes even less than no sense to continue yet another ignorant elites’ misuse of the word w/regard to education…& to poverty.)
Ha ha ha! Thanks for that.
But….
Would you like it with an Angie?
Would you like it with a banshee?
I would not like it with an Angie
I would not like it with a banshee
I do not like the use of grit
I do not like it, not one bit!
Would you like it in a school?
Would you like it in a pool?
Would you like it with some Gates’?
Would you like it with some dates?
No, not in school and not in pool
And not with Gates’ or even dates
I do not the cursed grit
I do not like it, not one bit!
Would you like it with a test?
Would you like it in a nest?
No not with test, and not in nest
And not with Gates’ or even dates
And not in school and not in pool
And not with Angie, nor with banshee
I do not like your gritty grit
Your gritty grit is full of it!
I do not like your grit and VAM
I do not like them, DAM I am
DAM I am!!!! Oh, Lord. Falling off my chair here. Thanks, Retired, SomeDAM!
By the way, where did you get your poetic license?
I’ve been operating without one and it’s only a matter of time before the authorities throw the book at me.
I would be very gritful if you could tell me
Here’s hoping, SomeDAM, that when the book is thrown at you, it is as light as “The Wit and Wisdom of Arne Duncan.”
Wonderful. And “hey! it could be refashioned into a Pear$on “$tandardized” te$t que$tion”–that’s perfect.
Retired: no credit goes to me. Brains and eggs is an actual concoction and my buddy who eschewed grits actually reveled in its consumption. It is hard to make up fiction to beat some people. The look of this breakfast was enough to make me understand how Luther could stomach a diet of worms.
I can’t believe that this is still a point of discussion in the education reform movement.Might be wrong but I think the concept of “grit” surfaced during the Bush Jr administration as part of their No Child Left Behind initiative. They were considering setting up studies on how to develop “grit” in our little softies. Talked about setting up a Dept of Gritology”. I thought they were kidding at first.
I remember a Sinclair news spokesman, side view, in a suit, face towards the camera. Classic boxing pose minus the fists. Telling us that we aren’t born special. That we need to earn it through grit and hard work. Some of us rise above and some don’t. Hey over it. Frowns and angry tones.
I remember a Republican strategist on the radio, just after Trump won and they had control of both Houses. “We’re going to undo 50 years of misguided efforts. No more about “feelings”, like with Black Lives Matter. We’re about FACTS now!” (Why didn’t the NPR interviewer ask what the “facts” were with BLM?).
I remember all of my inner city emotionally challenged special ed kids. “Grit” was part of their everyday lives. Without it they’d never have survived. What they really needed was a safe environment with good food consistently being put on the table by those who loved and wanted only what was best for them.
These guys are putting bandaids over bullet holes.
A few years ago, I was in DC and someone told me in all sincerity that NAEP was considering testing Grit. I was incredulous and scoffed. It hasn’t happened so I hope my ridicule helped to kill it.
Premature?
Grit’s companion, self-discipline, was the focus of a 2018 Fordham study by Michael Gottfried (University of Calf.-Santa Barbara). “Despite the authors’ efforts to construct a plausible control group, there may be …” And, indeed, there were findings as chronicled or, written by Fordham.
In the first 3 internet pages of a search about self discipline Catholic schools public schools, the Fordham study is the topic in the reporting of at least 15 Catholic media. And, then there was what I expected, echoes from the Koch’s Heartland and Manhattan Institute, along with a favorite of AEI, Philanthropy Roundtable. One outlet new to me, was Culture Feed Educators, which appears to have 11 white “experts”, including Eva Moskowitz.
In the quest for theocracy’s parallel schools consider, “Catholic schools excel at self discipline” (Aleteia, 8-27-2018).
In Gottfried’s 2017 cv (the one that I found available on-line), he identifies a grant of $200,000+ from Arnold’s foundation.
https://www.sri.com/work/publications/promoting-grit-tenacity-and-perseverance-critical-factors-success-21st-century
Wow. Lots of comments on GRIT.
Just don’t like the word (maybe someone will help define how “poopy” might be used as a concept in education as a 21st century necessity to “success”.) Gotta have poopieness taught in the schools. Sounds like organized crime – which is what is happening in America today. Stand by. Or at least, comment. Hope ya don’t pick up a gun if your anger is not disciplined by your grit “The pen is mightier than the sword”, but only when using an understandable language to a listening audience.
Let’s learn as much as we can about teaching grit, and why it is so important.
Click to access EJ1081394.pdf
https://cedar.wwu.edu/jec/vol10/iss1/3/
Follow every word down the rabbit hole – and then go beyond that.
Find out what our children actually are taught and learn in schools. Go with them everyday. Do the homework assignments. Get more “gritty”. Success (define) depends upon it, we are told. We’re losers if we aren’t gritty. Got to be more gritty, Johnny. That’s all you have to do. Kids know what gritty means.
“Student character” is the focus of U. of Va.’s Culture Feed Educators, part of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Based on the organization’s “experts” (photo array), it appears white culture is well-represented.
Contractor schools are well represented, as well- Eva Moskowitz- Success Academies and the Great Hearts’s co-founder.
The lone “expert” representing public education at Feed, is Tom Luna. His business-derived ed reforms were defeated at the ballot box in Idaho. I deduce that what builds student character for Culture Feed Educators approximates Luna’s agenda, teachers with larger class sizes, private schools paid for with vouchers and tax credits, teachers with merit pay and limited collective bargaining. Luna owns a truck scale enterprise. Business has always led the way in showing generosity, honesty, kindness, the genuine aspects of humanity, etc.
Tom Luna? Defeated in Idaho. Bloomberg supported his campaign.
I am overwhelmed by the humor & conversation this post has elicited (& thank you, Diane, for posting it!).
&–hope you’re still reading, SDP (great poems) & Bob (love your comment to SDP about hoping the book thrown at her/him being the very slim volume, Wit & Wisdom of Arne Duncan! LMAO!)
&, SDP, I “got” my poetic license from PFA (Poetry for America)–you know, a quickie (or quack-y), unaccredited, online org.
Thanks! Poets for America? Bloggers for America? Flimflam for America?