For a while, the notion of “grit” was all the rage in edu-land, but recently it seems to have taken a backseat in the collective consciousness.
Nevertheless, it’s been in mind recently for a couple of reasons: first, because I happened to pick up UPenn psychology professor Angela Duckworth’s eponymous 2016 best-seller while browsing in a bookstore not too long ago, but also because I’ve been thinking about the idea of fixed vs. malleable (alterable) traits.
In the book, Duckworth distinguishes between “fixed” mindset, in which talents and other abilities are held to be innate and unchangeable; and “growth” mindset, in which those capabilities can be learned and developed through practice. The author identifies grit, or a combination of persistence, as the key factor that distinguishes the performance of the highest achievers in a variety of fields (sports, music, etc.) from those at a lower level.
On one hand, the observation that people are capable of developing new skills and improving existing ones through focused study is exceedingly banal and obvious—it is, after all, the entire premise of school. (If learning and growth are impossible, why bother having an institution ostensibly devoted to them?) The fact that this could be presented as some sort of revolutionary insight, and that the media and education worlds would jump on it as such, strikes me as pretty hilarious. At the same time, the excitement over it strikes me as being indicative of some of the more bizarre strains of thought that have wormed their way into American education.
A couple of posts ago, for example, I wrote about the fact that working/processing speed seems to now be perceived in some quarters as an essential part of a person’s identity—i.e., a “fixed” trait. That realization kind of threw me for a loop: since increased speed normally accompanies increased skill, there seemed to be a weird underlying implication that whatever people can do “naturally” is what they’re stuck with; and so when things are challenging, there’s no point in trying to improve. Or that gaining proficiency somehow entails losing one’s essential sense of self. Either way, the basic possibility of learning is negated.
I’m not sure that’s what was intended, but it was definitely the vibe I got.
Maybe everyone is just exhausted from the stress of the pandemic—I’m definitely still disoriented from it—but I feel as if there’s been a cultural shift toward apathy, and very noticeably so in education. Trying hard is just… too much effort.
I mean, why bother being gritty if all that determination won’t get you someplace that matters anyway? And who cares about high achievement if anyone can just become famous as an influencer? (Incidentally, when I went to search for an image to accompany this post and typed in “grit,” I got a bunch of food photos of…grits. That strikes me as oddly telling.)
When I mentioned these observations to a friend recently, she pointed out that American culture has a tendency to swing widely between extremes. Given that, the current hyperfocus on mental health, and the fixation on young people’s purported fragility, can be seen as a pendulum swing to the far reaches of the opposite side.
I have also been re-reading Richard Hofstadter’s classic Anti-intellectualism in American Life, in part to remind myself that many of the current debates about education, and ideas being advanced as “innovative,” actually have very long histories (project-based education, for example, was first proposed a century ago); the work remains remarkably timely despite having been published in 1962. Tracing the origin of the Progressive movement’s influence on education, Hofstadter describes 1920s’ “democratic educators” bent for embracing the least academically inclined children the way “a fond mother embraces her handicapped child” and the “attempt to build the curriculum on their supposed needs.” If anything, this tendency has only metastasized in the decades since.
But as befits the tendency toward extremes, “grit” was also oversimplified and overhyped as a panacea to a whole host of academic problems. Success, particularly at a high level, is obviously far more than a matter of having the right mindset. In fact, as I skimmed through the book, I was struck by Duckworth’s matter-of-fact recognition of the fact that large amounts of practice are necessary for the type of mastery that permits a state of flow, and that sometimes that practice isn’t much fun. That reality was not particularly palatable in terms of academics in the first place, and the pandemic gave a certain type of educator—one who believed that if school were just made engaging enough through “authentic activities,” students would be intrinsically motivated enough to just naturally absorb everything they needed to know—the excuse they needed to turn their backs on it entirely.
That leads to my next point: what has been downplayed, if not directly overlooked, all along is that the idea of “growth mindset” is in fact a two-way street, involving not just attitude but also pedagogy.
In order for students to believe that they are capable of improving, they must have the concrete experience of getting better at challenging tasks—otherwise, exhortations to change their mindset ring hollow.
Kids generally know when they are improving for real, when they can do things that once seemed too difficult, vs. when adults are merely trying to make them feel good.
However, the former requires teachers to create the conditions under which students can experience genuine success and witness their skills improve over time. Competence breeds confidence, which in turn increases motivation and leads to long-term persistence in the face of difficulty, i.e., grit.
To address students’ struggles effectively, teachers must be able to either create or implement a coherently structured program that progressively builds and reinforces skills while connecting interrelated concepts in a way that allows for their transfer into long-term memory. This requires teachers to view their subject holistically; to understand which concepts are absolutely essential vs. secondary at a given point; to recognize how fundamentals will need be applied in more sophisticated ways further down the line; and to ensure that students have learned them securely enough to move on. It also requires them to set parameters that keep students clearly focused on learning what they are intended to be learning (as opposed, to, say, how to make pretty slides for a PowerPoint presentation).
Even under the best of circumstances, this is no easy task.
In much of the Anglosphere, the difficulty is also compounded by the fact that a good deal of educational theory not only ignores accepted findings in cognitive science but is based on the false dichotomy between “rote learning” and “higher-order thinking.”
The prevailing belief is that when students come to understand concepts deeply—something held to happen primarily through small-group discussion, with teacher involvement ideally kept to a minimum—then the knowledge component will simply take care of itself. Memorization is to be avoided to the greatest extent possible, and timed exercises focused on concrete tasks are viewed with disdain, if not outright horror. The importance of prompt, direct feedback and a highly targeted focus on improving weak spots—identified by Duckworth as key components of improving performance—goes largely ignored. So even if educators pay lip service to concepts like automaticity and fluency, teachers may design classroom activities in a way that impedes or flat-out prevents their development.
If students then experience difficulty, as many inevitably do, a common explanation is that that they are engaging in “meaningful struggle,” regardless of whether the struggle is actually leading anywhere. At best, teachers may eagerly jump to interpret semi-coherent statements as evidence of understanding. At worst, they may outright blame students for being insufficiently creative, as a friend’s colleagues did when their students at an elite New York City exam school begged (!) for lectures. In this context, it is easy to see how grit—like its infantilizing opposite—could be latched onto as an easy solution, something that effectively asks pupils to shoulder responsibility for the education profession’s shortcomings.
In other cases, grit has simply gotten rolled into quintessential constructivism and stripped of its core elements. For example, one Edutopia article advised assigning loosely structured “authentic projects” as well as giving students “sacred time to reflect upon learning”—a suggestion that is very nearly the opposite of the precise, intensely focused process Duckworth describes.
To be sure, not everyone wants, or needs, to achieve at the level of the “gritty” individuals Duckworth profiles in her book. There is—or at least there should not be—no shame in being merely above average or (gasp!) average. However, there is also a distinction to be made between pushing effectively and pushing ineffectively; it is certainly possible to incorporate some of the practices Duckworth outlines into education without going overboard. But that means having both the ability and the willingness to recognize and address weaknesses as such—not trying to cover them up, or to reframe not knowing as knowing, or knowing “differently,” tendencies that I suspect have now become such second nature to the educational establishment that it is willfully incapable of perceiving them as problematic, or considering why they might be harmful—to society as well as to students—in the long term. It is incumbent upon reasonable adults to push back against them and to call out this type of nonsense as such.
When students are taught in conditions designed allow them to succeed, they may reveal themselves to be much grittier than anyone realized.