Children and Grit

Posted on April 3, 2014

What’s the newest buzzword in education? Not new math, not common core, not even emotional intelligence. It’s “grit”.

UPenn psychology professor Angela Duckworth, who coined the term, defined grit in an NPR interview as the “quality of being able to sustain your passions, and also work really hard at them, over really disappointingly long periods of time.” Essentially, grit is perseverance through setbacks in order to reach a long-term goal. Professor Duckworth says that her research shows “grit is actually a better predictor of success than IQ or other measures when it comes to achievements.” According to UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center,  “Duckworth sees achievement as the product of skill and effort” meaning that anyone with enough grit can succeed at their chosen goal.

But is grit an inborn personality trait or is it something that can be taught? Many schools are jumping on the bandwagon, thinking that the promise of grit is simply too great to ignore. But, as the Greater Good Science Center makes clear, there are problems with trying to teach grit and especially with trying to grade grit.

Firstly, “it’s not known whether a person’s level of grit can change” which means that we can’t adequately measure whether it is being taught effectively. Secondly, grit is something that is measured over time. By nature, perseverance requires long term goals. And not all children (especially young ones) have long term goals. Even fewer have long term goals that they feel passionate about and that they have created. And passion is required for grit. And finally, again according to the Greater Good Science Center, “research on grit rarely, if ever, mentions the importance of emotions” even though grit relies on self-control and self-discipline. Ideally, grit involves “cognitive reappraisal”: redefining a situation so that a mistake can become an opportunity for growth.

However, another way to deal with negative feelings is emotional suppression: pushing the emotions away and refusing to deal with them. And emotional suppression “can lead to higher levels of negative emotions, anxiety, and depression”, none of which bode well for future achievement or happiness. And, as UPenn education professor Joan Goodman notes, “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.” So while grit may indeed be a key to both academic and nonacademic success, we need to be careful about how much emphasis we place on it and how we teach our children to be “grittier.” We can’t emphasize grit  in a way that suppresses emotions or makes kids feel like they are “bad” because they’re not gritty enough. Rather, grit must come along with empathy, compassion, mindfulness, and our favorite tool for emotional development: dealing with the feeling.

Special thanks to UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center for this post. Their website is a treasure trove of research.

What do you think about grit? Has your child’s school mentioned grit? Do you think grit is something that can be taught? Tell us about it on Facebook and Twitter.