Angela Duckworth graces the Costco Connection this month talking about the character grit that she says made her who she is today. She wants America to teach children to have grit too, so they will be successful. She has a Grit Scale. HERE. And she runs a character lab.
Her grit goals for children include the following:
- I am a hard worker.
- Setbacks don’t discourage me.
- I finish whatever I begin.
- I don’t give up easily.
- I am diligent.
- I will never give up.
Numbers 3 and 6 might especially give us pause.
Books Teach Character
For starters, grit is a repackaged idea. If you’ve read The Little Engine Who Could by Watty Piper to your child, you’ve taught them to try their best. Many children’s books incorporate the idea of endurance. It’s a timeless virtue.
Teaching character traits like perseverance through children’s literature seems more meaningful, and enjoyable, than browbeating students to carry through on every task to prove their stamina.
Picture books and books in general teach values children can internalize in a meaningful manner. Children face many opportunities to demonstrate persistence. They don’t have to always complete a task.
Teachers Know When to Help Children with Perseverance
The grit issue goes to the heart of teaching. Good teachers encourage students to try their best. If a teacher is discouraging your child, make an appointment to discuss it soon!
Teachers and parents also recognize when a child becomes frustrated, when a task might need to be dropped for good, or put aside for later.
Making that determination, when to encourage, when to back off, when to change, defines good instruction.
Grit’s Strictness is Worrisome
Duckworth’s grit can be found in the harshly run KIPP charter schools. Telling poor children they must display grit to succeed is particularly controversial and reminiscent of the “no excuses” mantra pushed on children with NCLB.
It’s a damaging message to the child who fails—who can’t reach a goal put before them. It’s unfair to a student with life circumstances that make learning difficult.
KIPP is also known for its punishment. Not all children demonstrate the grit expected of them with adult demands.
Grit Can Hurt Students with Learning Disabilities
Pushing a child with learning disabilities to have grit can be especially detrimental.
There’s a disability called “perseveration” where students get stuck on a task. They can’t easily hop off the Ferris wheel. If the work is not helping them move forward, it’s redundant and ineffective.
Don’t confuse this with holding high expectations, which are important. But high expectations should also be reachable. Knowledgeable teachers with the help of parents determine such goals at IEP meetings.
Whose Goals?
It’s important to remember, that with grit and high-stakes standards, including Common Core, children are not always setting their own goals. They aren’t dreaming of passing tests. They want to do well on them, or they fear them, because it’s what adults tell them to do. They’re being set up to please adults.
That’s a huge problem with grit and what makes it disingenuous.
Pushback on Grit
There’s a lot of pushback when it comes to grit. My favorite is Alfie Kohn’s “The Downside of ‘Grit’: What Really Happens When Kids Are Pushed to Be More Persistent?”
Here is some of what Kohn argues:
- Not everything is worth doing.
- People up to no good often have grit to spare.
- Choice of goal is more important.
- “Nonproductive persistence” is real.
- Leading a happy life can be fulfilling.
Failing With Grit
It’s also interesting that Duckworth touts her research with students who have grit and participated in a spelling bee. While learning to be good spellers, and contests can be fun, there’s only one winner.
I think this demonstrates why grit doesn’t always get you to the promiseland. Much in life is competitive.
A student could practice the piano rigorously their whole life, have the best grit imaginable, but there’re only so many slots available at Juilliard.
Grit refers to flexibility, but it can leave children feeling like losers. They could see loss as their fault, believing they didn’t try hard enough, when it was simply luck!
Who Made the Pancakes?
In the almost wordless children’s picture book Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie dePaola, a woman who lives on a farm, jumps over obstacles to make herself pancakes. She dreams of them. But in the end she fails.
Then she smells the pancakes her neighbor is making. She invites herself to their house, makes herself at home. She finally gets pancakes.
The last picture shows her sitting under a sign. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again.”
The thing is…she failed. In the end, she quit! It was her neighbor who succeeded in making pancakes.
There’s a message there about grit, but it’s not so clear the kind of grit the woman had.
Life’s a Mess!
Duckworth tries to simplify grit, but it isn’t simple at all. Children need to understand this. That trying to achieve one’s goals is a good thing, that you should get back on the horse if you fall off, especially if it’s something you really want.
But also, if you don’t like where you’re headed, perseverance isn’t going to necessarily make it better. Sometimes the best thing you can do is quit.
Other times, you can struggle to reach the goal, but through no fault of your own, it’s unreachable. You’re likely not to blame, and even if you are, there are always other avenues. You can always move forward to something new.
Mistakes and giving up are sometimes O.K.
Kids need to know that too.
I wish that you would send this into Costco. I was angry when I saw this on the front of their monthly magazine since it’s my favorite place to shop. I believe that everyone has GRIT…of some kind. Every single person is given a gift and it is up to them if they wish to maximize it’s potential. Some are good at math, some can draw well or play the guitar and some may be more in tune with social arts. It’s what makes life varied and worth living. My mother used to say to me when I would get a “B” in art class (it messed up my goal of having straight “A’s”) that if everyone were the same, it would be a really boring world in which to live. The problem isn’t in Duckworth’s research, it’s how it’s being used to become a way to raise scores in Math and ELA only and the fact that she is now promoting (and making money from it) it in ed reform circles so that the children in public & charter schools are now her “test rats”. She needs to be called out….along with Dweck and her “growth mindset”. These people can/should do all the research that they wish, but American children should not be their “test rats” without parental permission….period.
Very well said, Lisa! Thank you. By the way, it seems like growth mindset hasn’t been mentioned much lately. Maybe because of the research claiming it wasn’t as effective as first believed.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180522114523.htm
Yeah, tell that to the teachers in my school system. I’ve gotten away from all the SEL. Child #2 is now in private HS.
Grit in the south is never a singular noun. That is for someone else. It is grits, of course, that southern food that was often all the depression generation had to eat back before the age of air conditioning made it possible for people to move here from all over.
It was really hot during the summer, and people like us had no air conditioning that could be used to create a good night’s sleep. The best way to be comfortable was to work so hard and get so hot that anything felt like cooling off. The closer your body was to being in shock, the more possible it was to be cool.
I recall cleaning out the chicken barn with a scoop after all the chickens were gone, sweating like an adult and feeling the chicken mites crawling on me, indistinguishable from the droplets of sweat that ran down my whole body. I ran after cows that were out. I hauled hay.
Like Duckworth, I guess all this hardship developed “grit” in my character. Unlike Duckworth, who has figured out how to monetize her grit, I just use mine to get by in a society that thinks it is OK to pay me less than the state median wage for college graduates. That wage after a masters degree and 32 years of teaching. Hopefully, I will not be like the satire “Little Engine that Could’nt Do It” written by an acquaintance. That engine pulled and pulled until it blew up it boiler and scattered its little iron body all over the comic that gave it literary satirical life.
So go for it, Duckworth. Here’ s to you! You have made it with your grit! Now let us get some sleep.
Cross posed this on Diane Ravitch’s blog. Ithink your discussion is spot on. Here are few additions.
Dr. Angela Duckworth’s CHARACTER LAB promotes seven character strengths: Zest, Grit, Optimism, Self-Control, Gratitude, Social Intelligence, and Curiosity.
Character Lab now offers training for the Relay Graduate School of Education. Relay also trains charter school teachers in the class management doctrines of Doug Lemov. Teachers are required to master Lemov’s forty-nine no-nonsense teaching tips and use these boot camp tactics with charter school students who are, in the main, African-American and Latinix.
In my opinion, this practical alliance of Duckworth with Lemov reveals a desire to frame character as a matter of compliance with rules set by others, rather than learning to think about rules, why they are made, when they are needed, who gets to decide, whether rules are fair, and so on.
In addition, I think that too little attention is given to the very troubling concept that character can be taught as a set of “skills” (skill sets). By definition, skills are evident in the effective and efficient use of techniques, irrespective of the motive. For example, I can appear to be full of zest—a performing arts skill—without feeling full of zest.
Notably absent from this well-known character-education program are the attributes of kindness and truth telling. That should be a concern, especially in this era of Trump and supporters, who are specializing in hurling insults and lying.
In March, Duckworth entered into a ”research partnership” that will use personal data from students as they or others report bullying or sexual assault. Parents can also use the form see this example from Iowa City https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSehmzn8KdsocS4fbSD8In4nwbeubrbULL_Lv2NdWWUsgcIbiw/viewform
For more on the data “partnership” see: https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/03/12/character-lab-expands-school-research-capacity-with-qualtrics-partnership.aspx
See also
THE CHARACTER LAB: https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2017/09/19/angela-duckworth-character-lab-science-center.html?s=print
THE CHARACTER LAB: https://www.bridgespan.org/insights/library/education/developing-many-more-effective-learners/profile-character-lab-sel
CRITICISM OF RELAY/DEMOV VALUES: https://citiessuburbsschoolchoice.wordpress.com/2016/05/07/the-power-of-pedagogy-why-we-shouldnt-teach-like-champions/
SCHOOL COUNSELOR CUTS: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/15/school-safety-cuts-trump-administration-348968
Oh, Laura! I knew Relay was connected to Lemov but did not know the Character Lab connection. That’s quite disturbing. I look forward to reading all your links. Thank you so much for your important research and this comment.