Monday, May 9, 2016

The limits of grit

From a New York Times review of Angela Duckworth’s Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance :

Giving character training to the underprivileged will not level America’s increasingly Dickensian inequalities, of course, but Duckworth’s ideas about the cultivation of tenacity have clearly changed some lives for the better.
The reviewer is skeptical, and continues so. But I’d flip the sentence for a greater, more appropriate degree of skepticism:
Duckworth’s ideas about the cultivation of tenacity have clearly changed some lives for the better, of course, but giving character training to the underprivileged will not level America’s increasingly Dickensian inequalities.
Grit is a necessary — not sufficient — condition for learning. Duckworth knows that. But her work seems to inspire those who think it’s possible to “fix” education without addressing poverty. The “no excuses” attitude toward adversity too much resembles that of the Black Knight: “’Tis but a scratch.”

A related post
Learning, character, and failure

comments: 2

Daughter Number Three said...

It must be frustrating to be a researcher and find your work coopted by forces beyond your control. I haven't followed the Duckworth/grit debate closely enough to know if she is somewhat willing or is being used, but it clearly is used to bolster the no-excuses, poverty-doesn't-matter wing of the reform movement.

Michael Leddy said...

Duckworth addresses this question on her website: Does the message of grit imply that poverty and inequality don’t matter? I would hope that the question is addressed at length in the book (which I haven’t seen). It must pain her to see the uses made of her work.

I found the idea of grit tremendously helpful in teaching writing, often to students whose history with “English” was unhappy, sometimes humiliating. (Example: a high-school teacher returning work with a McDonald’s job application attached.) Carol Dweck’s work was hugely helpful as well. In so many cases I was able to persuade students that they really could get better. And they did.

It’s unfortunate that “grit,” a useful idea, expressed so succinctly, should be turned into a cudgel with which to beat children.