Grit
Galton, Eugenics,
Racism, Calvinism
EduCon 2.7
Grit
Galton, Eugenics,
Racism, Calvinism
EduCon 2.7
sticktoitness vs quitting: your personal perspective
Real Life
A kid comes to school daily without homework:
Is it the kid’s lack of grit?
Is it the homework?
Is it the home resources?
Is it a microeconomic choice?
Real Life
A kid can’t sit still through classes:
Is it the kid’s lack of grit?
Is it the teaching?
Is it the furniture?
Is it a question of sleep at home?
Is it ADHD requiring medication?
Real Life
A kid won’t focus on tests:
Is it the kid’s lack of grit?
Is it the test?
Is it a question of priorities and values?
Is it about parental support?
The Theory
Galton (1869) suggested that the inclination to pursue especially challenging aims over months, years, and even decades is distinct from the capacity to resist “the hourly temptations,” pursuits which bring momentary pleasure but are immediately regretted. Understanding how goals are hierarchically organized clarifies how self-control and grit are related but distinct: Self-control entails aligning actions with any valued goal despite momentarily more-alluring alternatives; grit, in contrast, entails having and working assiduously toward a single challenging superordinate goal through thick and thin, on a timescale of years or even decades. Although both self-control and grit entail aligning actions with intentions, they operate in different ways and over different timescales (Duckworth, Gendler, & Gross, 2014).
The Theory
Galton (1869) suggested that the inclination to pursue especially challenging aims over months, years, and even decades is distinct from the capacity to resist “the hourly temptations,” pursuits which bring momentary pleasure but are immediately regretted. Understanding how goals are hierarchically organized clarifies how self-control and grit are related but distinct:
The Theory
Self-control entails aligning actions with any valued goal despite momentarily more-alluring alternatives; grit, in contrast, entails having and working assiduously toward a single challenging superordinate goal through thick and thin, on a timescale of years or even decades. Although both self-control and grit entail aligning actions with intentions, they operate in different ways and over different timescales (Duckworth, Gendler, & Gross, 2014).
Duckworth and Grit
Research Methods
Religious vs Scientific Underlying Beliefs
Racist Descriptions of Values
Damaging Treatment of Children
Changing Kids or Changing Schools
Lazy as a Social Construct
"Irish beggars are to be met everywhere, and they are as ignorant and vicious as they are poor. They are lazy, improvident and unthankful; they fill our poorhouses and our prisons, and are as brutish in their superstition as Hindoos." �- Toronto Globe 1851.
Grit Scale
Directions: Please respond to the following 12 items. Be honest – there are no right or wrong answers!
1. I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge.
Very much like me
Mostly like me
Somewhat like me
Not much like me
Not like me at all
Grit Scale
2. New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones.*
Very much like me
Mostly like me
Somewhat like me
Not much like me
Not like me at all
Grit Scale
3. My interests change from year to year.*
Very much like me
Mostly like me
Somewhat like me
Not much like me
Not like me at all
Grit Scale
4. Setbacks don’t discourage me.
Very much like me
Mostly like me
Somewhat like me
Not much like me
Not like me at all
Grit Scale
5. I have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time but later lost interest.*
Very much like me
Mostly like me
Somewhat like me
Not much like me
Not like me at all
Grit Scale
6. I am a hard worker.
Very much like me
Mostly like me
Somewhat like me
Not much like me
Not like me at all
Grit Scale
7. I often set a goal but later choose to pursue a different one.*
Very much like me
Mostly like me
Somewhat like me
Not much like me
Not like me at all
Grit Scale
8. I have difficulty maintaining my focus on projects that take more than a few months to complete.*
Very much like me
Mostly like me
Somewhat like me
Not much like me
Not like me at all
Grit Scale
9. I finish whatever I begin.
Very much like me
Mostly like me
Somewhat like me
Not much like me
Not like me at all
Grit Scale
10. I have achieved a goal that took years of work.
Very much like me
Mostly like me
Somewhat like me
Not much like me
Not like me at all
Grit Scale
11. I become interested in new pursuits every few months.*
Very much like me
Mostly like me
Somewhat like me
Not much like me
Not like me at all
Grit Scale
12. I am diligent.
Very much like me
Mostly like me
Somewhat like me
Not much like me
Not like me at all
Grit Scale
Scoring:
1. For questions 1, 4, 6, 9, 10 and 12 (the “good”) assign the following points:
5 = Very much like me
4 = Mostly like me
3 = Somewhat like me
2 = Not much like me
1 = Not like me at all
Grit Scale
Scoring:
2. For questions 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 and 11 (* the “bad”) assign the following points:
1 = Very much like me
2 = Mostly like me
3 = Somewhat like me
4 = Not much like me
5 = Not like me at all
Grit Scale
Scoring:
Add up all the points and divide by 12. The maximum score on this scale is 5 (extremely gritty), and the lowest scale on this scale is 1 (not at all gritty).
Duckworth, A.L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M.D., & Kelly, D.R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 1087-1101.12- Item Grit Scale
Thought
"We were going to shower. We were last. Valsang was standing on his side of the window. Humlum went in ahead of me. He walked straight through the warm shower as though it did not exist and in under the first of the cold ones. And there he stayed. He did not move, he just stood there, while his skin first went red and then white. He looked at his feet, I knew he stayed there so that I could stay in the warm shower and not be made to get a move on. I had shut my eyes, the warm water closed up, like a wall. I had never stood for as long before.” �- Peter Høeg, Borderliners
Thought
“Besides, Kohn says, if there's a problem with how kids are learning, the onus should be on schools to get better at how they teach — not on kids to get better at enduring more of the same.
"Grit's taken off as a fad in education, because that's a convenient distraction that doesn't address the pedagogical and curricular problems in the schools," he says. "But the more we focus on [grit] ... the less likely it is that we make the kind of changes that can help our children go to better schools."
What separates Grit from Compliance?
Thought
"The language is important, because you're talking about virtues, you're talking about character, and ... you don't want to generate the notion that you are a bad kid if you are not gritty, and you're a good kid if you are," says Goodman.
“Besides, Goodman says, grit may not be a character trait at all, but rather a byproduct of other traits, like confidence, courage and curiosity. And, she says, people can be gritty in some things but not others. A kid might be passionate about chess, for example, but completely disengaged in chemistry class.”
Thought
"[O]ne’s duty in a calling, is what is most characteristic of the social ethic of capitalistic culture," Max Weber wrote in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, "and is in a sense the fundamental basis of it. It is an obligation which the individual is supposed to feel and does feel towards the content of his professional activity, no matter in what it consists, in particular no matter whether it appears on the surface as a utilization of his personal powers. Or only of his material possessions (as capital)."
What do teachers see as indicators of a lack of Grit?
Thought
"The "structural conditions" Chait outlines above can be summed up under the phrase "white supremacy." I have spent the past two days searching for an era when black culture could be said to be "independent" of white supremacy. I have not found one. Certainly the antebellum period, when one third of all enslaved black people found themselves on the auction block, is not such an era. And surely we would not consider postbellum America, when freedpeople were regularly subjected to terrorism, to be such an era.” Ta-Nehisi Coates in the March 21, 2014 Atlantic.
Are school skills transferrable to life skills?
Thought
"For hundreds of years our society allowed skin color and economic success to serve as facile proxies for the content of a person's character, and for a long time I was pleased to think that in my lifetime we might be getting beyond that," Peter Gow wrote in EdWeek earlier this month. He continued, "How wrong I seem to have been; the Grit Narrative, its shadow spreading back over the land under the guise of "research," threatens to take us straight back to an era where poverty is about laziness and where failure, unless it's the "failing up" of a revered entrepreneur, carries the stain of moral bankruptcy."