Education Debate: Which Is More Important - Grit, Or Intelligence?

HughPickens.com writes Anna North writes in the NYT that self-control, curiosity, and "grit" may seem more personal than academic, but at some schools, they're now part of the regular curriculum. Some researchers say personality could be even more important than intelligence when it comes to students' success in school. "We probably need to start rethinking our emphasis on intelligence," says Arthur E. Poropat citing research that shows that both conscientiousness and openness are more highly correlated with student performance than intelligence. "This isn't to say that we should throw intelligence out, but we need to pull back on thinking that this is the only game in town." The KIPP network of charter schools emphasizes grit along with six other "character strengths," including self-control and curiosity. "We talk a lot about them as being skills or strengths, not necessarily traits, because it's not innate," says Leyla Bravo-Willey. "If a child happens to be very gritty but has trouble participating in class, we still want them to develop that part of themselves."

But the focus on character has encountered criticism. "To begin with, not everything is worth doing, let alone doing for extended periods, and not everyone who works hard is pursuing something worthwhile" says Alfie Kohn. "On closer inspection, the concept of grit turns out to be dubious, as does the evidence cited to support it. Persistence can actually backfire and distract from more important goals." There's other evidence that grit isn't always desirable. Gritty people sometimes exhibit what psychologists call "nonproductive persistence": They try, try again, says Dean MacFarlin though the result may be either unremitting failure or "a costly or inefficient success that could have been easily surpassed by alternative courses of action."

Comments

obligatory /. car analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

intelligence = engine
grit = tires
personality=gas type (ethanol, diesel, electric, etc)

in this road of life...(get it? get it?)

Re:obligatory /. car analogy

[ShanghaiBill]

Isn't the point of this whole debate whether intelligence is the engine or grit is the engine?

If you RTFA you will see that the "debate" is about what makes people successful in school, not what makes them successful in life. If you dumb down the curriculum, so that intelligence matters less, and "grit" (just completing the assignments) matters more, then it should not be too surprising that the data shows that intelligence matters less and grit matters more, because that is the way the system is intentionally designed.

Re:obligatory /. car analogy

[TopherC]

This hits the issue on the nose. Thanks!

I was reading Kohn's article on this just a couple days ago, and thought he made a lot of good points. It might help to know that one perspective of Kohn's is realizing the limitations and over-utilization of testing, and standardized testing in particular. "Grit" may be, in proper moderation, a good thing. But the positive feedback cycle that relentless accountability and academic assessment provides can go haywire here, rewarding students for being persistent to a fault and rewarding teachers and schools for producing such students.

The main difficulty with testing in schools, AFAICT, is that the skills, character traits, and knowledge that are most worth teaching are generally not ones that are easy to assess. Combine this with the fact that all teachable test outcomes become their own measure of success, regardless of their inherent value to a person. This makes it easy for us, as a society, to lose sight of what's really important in education.

Nonproductive persistence, indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I have known many persistent idiots. Things would have been much better for all concerned if they would have just quit trying and ask for help.

Re:Nonproductive persistence, indeed

[ShanghaiBill]

I have known many persistent idiots.

These people are the fourth quadrant of General von Hammerstein-Equord's classification. He rated German officers on two axises, intelligence and diligence. Officers that were intelligent and diligent made good staff officers. Officers that were intelligent and lazy, made good commanders because they would appropriately delegate work to others. Officers that were stupid and lazy, could be assigned to routine duties. Officers that were stupid and diligent, should be shot.

Neither -- And the question is stupid

[TrollstonButterbeans]

Balance. Intelligence is knowing when to give up and go back to the drawing board.

Without persistence, intelligence is an unfulfilled and wasted gift. Without intelligence, persistence is an exercise in futility. Which is why less intelligent people depend on social feedback to make decisions.

It's not hard.

Psychologists relearning what has been known for centuries. Someone didn't read their own textbooks ...

Re:Neither -- And the question is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Balance. Intelligence is knowing when to give up and go back to the drawing board.

No, that is Wisdom not intelligence.

Re:Neither -- And the question is stupid

[mwvdlee]

Intelligence is recognizing failure.
Wisdom is acting upon that.

Re:Neither -- And the question is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Intelligence gets you skill points and prepared arcane casting. Wisdom helps your will save and is the prepared divine casting stat. Unless you a paladin. Then you only need charisma.

My definitions are complete, useful, and correct. Yours are not. Who lives in a fantasy world now?

Re:conscientiousness and openness

[Anonymous Coward]

grit is essentially determination - the will to continue despite your feelings. This has certainly seen many a job finished that would otherwise not even have been started. We combat this in life by waving money around, and this seems to get things moving! Grit, is the ability to do that to yourself. Although not directly an attribute of intelligence, it does mean someone may study something longer and harder, and discover more about it. That's pretty important, and will help someone less intelligent to possibly discover something more that an intelligent person was too keen to dismiss, or perhaps did not occur to them.

Re:conscientiousness and openness

[Pope Hagbard]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It depends on where you are in life

[scamper_22]

One of the greatest tragedies in our times is the idea that all children should get the same education. It is the oddest thing. We all admit that children actually start off at different levels.

But rather than do what is best for each child, we pretend there is some sort of universal curriculum that all children should follow. It's just not the case.

Grit, self-control, curiousity are probably very important if your main goal is to get a job and provide for your family.

I was a teacher for a while, and this was the most frustrating things. Having to teach kids in a 'non-academic neighborhood' for lack of a better term, as I taught in both inner-city type schools as well as rural 'trashy' schools. I'm up there teaching math these kids couldn't care about and is going to be of little use to any of them in their future. Yet, that is the curriculum, because it is standardized and they happen to be in grade 10.

To these kids, teaching them some grit, self-control, curiosity would probably benefit them 1000x more and improve their life and the next generation.

Yet, somehow it is considered unfair if we did that because then we'd be admitting they are not as advanced as other kids. Yes, they're not. That is why people would classify them as a trouble neighborhood or whatever.

Then of course you have other kids who might not suffer the same problem and maybe for them you need to focus more on intelligence and academics.

Ultimately, I'd rather have the school system deal with the reality of children by using different methods on different groupings of children as opposed to pretending everyone is the same when they're not.

And no, I'm not saying there aren't any brilliant kids in a ghetto school. They do exist. One might say, I was one of them. I'm saying it is pretty easy to keep us happy. Just having academic streams in high school or give us other classes. Maybe school wasn't optimized for me, but in the end, I have a decent job and make decent money. Let's face it, how many children from ghetto neighborhoods are working at Google?

But as far as social issues go, our biggest problems are not optimizing intelligence for advanced R&D here. It's the basics for most of the population and it is there that grit, self-control, curiosity are really much better.

And yes, maybe that formalizes the reality that if you're in a ghetto school, you would be more educated to just get a job. And if you are in a rich area, you are more educated to do advanced academic work.

Yes, maybe it formalizes it. But it's not like without that formalization, it isn't true today.

But I guess, that's political correctness. Better to have poor people suffer, than formalize that they're different in this time and place.

Re:It depends on where you are in life

[demonlapin]

Risk and reward. Poor kids are much better off pursuing low-risk, moderate-reward strategies rather than high-risk, high-reward strategies, because in the event of failure, they don't have anything to fall back on. The children of the upper middle class can aim for the stars, knowing that they won't end up in the mud if they miss. Climbing the ladder takes generations.

Re:It depends on where you are in life

[conquistadorst]

To these kids, teaching them some grit, self-control, curiosity would probably benefit them 1000x more and improve their life and the next generation.

Yet, somehow it is considered unfair if we did that because then we'd be admitting they are not as advanced as other kids. Yes, they're not.

It's a great thought but which is worse, denying them opportunities for social mobility or teaching them only what they need to know? I know we have tons of problems in the US but the idea still survives here that you can reach for any rung in the ladder if you dare and work to climb. We wouldn't want to jeopardize that. So I think you just have to do both. I'd also further argue the primary responsibility of teaching children grit, self-control, curiosity lies with the family. Schools can only be asked to reinforce it. We really need to return to the notion that families raise their own kids and they go to school primarily for education and everything else is secondary.

I was raised in an immigrant family with humble beginnings and very high expectations. That was reinforced on a near daily basis. How could we ever expect teachers to teach that? It's just not their place.

Re:It depends on where you are in life

[scamper_22]

I agree with you, but here's the issue.

I'm also a child of immigrant parents. We were poor and we made it quite well.

As you say, maybe your parents taught you grit, self-control, curiosity. Mine did as well. Good for us. We are truly fortunate in that sense. More fortunate than some rich kid whose parents didn't and is now on high-end drugs.

You can sit there and say parents should do this and that. But they're NOT. I reread my post and I hope it doesn't come across as saying all poor kids should just get basic education and all rich kids should get advanced education. I can see how it can be read that way.

It is more that public education should be geared to the needs of most of the children in the neighborhood.

If the parents aren't doing the job. Great, do whatever you can to fix that. But until you do fix it and have all these kids raised by decent parents, schools have to deal with the reality of the students as is. It just so happens that if parents aren't teaching their kids grit-self-control-curiousity... then I would say schools should be allowed to focus on that and focus less on 'academics'. Right now, this is impossible with standard curriculum.

Would this deny opportunities? That's an odd question. In either case, you're denying kids opportunities if that's the language you choose to use.

If you have a class of 20 and 15 of then would benefit more from grit/self-control/curiosity and 5 would benefit from advanced academics... no matter how you focus your school you're denying some kids the opportunity. You're be holding back 15 kids from a decent job and future in favour of the 5 kids if you just blindly go on focusing on academics. Of course if you focus on the 15 kids, you might hold back the 5 kids.

Ideally, you offer different policies for all kids. But assuming you some standards in each school, I'd rather tailor the school to the 15 to get them decent jobs and life.
Kids who already have grit/self-control/curiosity can pursue their own academic pursuits especially in this day and age of the internet.
I was programming long before I even took such a course in school. That is what you can do when you already have those basic values.
Also advanced classes can be used to separate thing or after school programs...
It is much easier to provide advanced classes to kids who already have grit/self-control/curiosity.

As I said, this is why my preference would be to focus on the 15 instead of the 5. The social costs of kids not getting advanced academics is a lot less than the social costs of the 15 kids not getting a decent job and learning basic life skills. Like I said, I went to a 'ghetto' school and no doubt, I lacked a lot of things (and this is in Canada). I lacked a good computer club, good network of academic kids, connections with industry... but whatever, in the end, I'm pretty okay. Most of the academic ones from my high school are. It's the rest you have to be concerned about.

Re:Phenmomenal raw intelligence got me through sch

[west]

Intelligence stays with you as long as you are above ground and cannot be taken away.

You're not 50 yet, are you?

That razor sharp intelligence is only marginally less fleeting than beauty.

The Full List

[DumbSwede]

The full list:

• Zest
• Grit
• Optimism
• Self-Control
• Gratitude
• Social Intelligence
• Curiosity

I read through the description for each. At first I thought maybe this stuff was all a little too touchy-feely, but the descriptions seem reasonable. My main quibble is these should be things parents are instilling in their kids not the educators. I want Educators to focus on presenting knowledge, not crafting personalities. That said, so many children lack good guidance at home it is tempting to throw this in with the educator’s responsibilities as well.

As the parent of a Straight ‘A’ gifted child I can say for a fact Hard Work is the most important factor. Call this Grit if you want. Also IQ is not static. Working hard at any age WILL raise your IQ. There are those that say it varies by at most 10 points, but I know both for myself and my daughter it is over 20 points higher than both our first testings.

Re:The Full List

[pjt33]

As the parent of a Straight ‘A’ gifted child I can say for a fact Hard Work is the most important factor.

As a former straight A gifted child, I can say that you're wrong. Maybe hard work is the most important factor for your daughter, but you can't extrapolate from her to every successful student.

The only year in my education in which I worked hard was my first year at university, partly because I didn't know how good I was relative to my peers and wanted to compete, partly because a quarter of my course was material which I did actually need to work at, and partly because my one-on-one for that material was with someone who really pushed me. When I finished in the top three and won a scholarship, I didn't feel the need to prove myself in the second and third years, and I had more freedom to choose courses which I found easy. The most important factors for my academic success were intuition, a memory which was good at retaining the things that matters for the subjects I chose, and curiosity.

Just to be completely clear: I'm not knocking hard work. The person who finished first in my course in the second year was a friend whom I met up with once or twice a week to explain the things they hadn't understood in lectures. I think they worked quite hard, and maybe I could have finished first if I'd worked harder. But I preferred to spend about twenty hours a week working and have lots of time to participate in various student societies, because university is about more than grades. (I still got first class honours, so I didn't judge it too badly!)

Re:The Full List

[Anonymous Coward]

I would hazard a guess that your curiosity drove you to spend time doing things (reading, playing with computers, etc) that others considered work. They certainly did for me. It didn't FEEL like work, but it's the reason college was so easy for me.

Anything is worth trying...

[Karmashock]

... One of the reasons these efforts to harmonize national education policy are foolish is that they limit what various schools are trying or can try.

I am all for any school trying something so long as the parents stand behind it.

If the parents want to try this "grit" concept... then go for it. It can't hurt so long as it is tried on a small scale.

Too often things go directly from some theory in academia to broad application without testing the concept empirically on the small scale. I am all for those that come up with new education ideas pitching them to individual schools and seeing if they work.

If they do, then broaden the application to a district or a state. And if that works well then suggest that other schools adopt the concept as well. But always let schools decide to ignore the new thing as well because they might be trying something entirely different.

Diversity is more then skin color and gender. It is also diversity of thought, ideas, and method. Let people do things their own way and judge them by the results. Concepts that are successful should earn respect and wider adoption. Concepts that are failures should earn shame and reduced application.

Re:Girls and Grit

[roman_mir]

What a dumbass comment. Hey, dumbass, ever seen mothers looking after their families? If it were not for their grit many more kids would end up in jail and or dead.

depends...

[unami]

"We probably need to start rethinking our emphasis on intelligence," says Arthur E. Poropat citing research that shows that both conscientiousness and openness are more highly correlated with student performance than intelligence. " Or maybe we need to start rethinking why intelligence is less correlated with student performance than conscientiousness. In school i've seen a lot of stubborn idiots, who were successfull because they got on the teachers nerves until the teacher gave them good grades. or people who were just conformists and got good grades because they were more or less invisible. it depends on what the goals are - if you want a society of conformists, dominated by loud idiots, that's the way to go.

Re:depends...

[werepants]

This is a good point. A lot of where grades come from is about being conscientious - turning things in on time, listening to directions, etc. However, I think it is arguable that this is a good thing, because in the work world, and life in general, being conscientious is going to do more for you than being intelligent, up to a certain point.

That is, a serious deficiency in conscientiousness is one of the fastest ways I know of to get fired from almost any kind of job, whereas people with below average intelligence can still be very successful in lots of professions if they are diligent.

Kohn is attacking a strawman

[Salamander]

What Poropat, Duckworth, and others suggest is that multiple traits - including "grit" - contribute to success. He even provides evidence to back up that hardly-surprising conclusion. So how does Kohn respond? By immediately projecting a "one trait uber alles" mentality onto the grit proponents. To be even more clear, he's attributing to them exactly the idea they're trying to refute. Then he cherry-picks examples of excessive persistence leads to adverse outcomes, ignoring the issue of whether those outcomes would be likely to occur in people who had developed other traits such as curiosity and openness. In the end he only demonstrates further the problems with any single-trait theory of learning, supporting exactly the point he meant to oppose.

Maybe his parents or teachers should have helped Kohn develop some more of those other traits. Like honesty.

It's a sad truth

[XB-70]

All the grit in the world won't help a kid who is an idiot!

That being said, never praise a kid for being smart. Always praise hard work.

Of course ...

[gstoddart]

Of course raw intelligence isn't the be-all and end-all about how much you can achieve.

Look at the mensa members who work as security guards.

If you're smart, but lazy, you won't achieve much either.

Hell, I think I've met more than one person who would have qualified for mensa who went on to become seriously messed up people.

Your score on an IQ test doesn't define you.

Grit?

[Feral Nerd]

Wikipedia defines grit as:

Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual's passion for a particular long-term goal or endstate, coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective.

Which sounds about right to me. I've never scored in the upper two percentiles on IQ tests (quite frankly I always found them rather stupid) but I still finished at the top of my class at Uni. I put that down to compensating for any lacking intelligence with an awful lot of work and persistence. Whenever this topic comes up I am reminded of Stephen Hawking, who is undoubtedly very intelligent. I remember him claiming in a documentary I watched years ago that if he hadn't been struck by this disability would probably not have amounted to much because he would have been drifting from one interesting project to the other like a butterfly without ever making much impact but since his disability severely limited his options he was in effect forced to stay/persist within a relatively narrow field where he has made a huge contribution. Intelligence on it's own is not enough. Upbringing also has a lot to do with whether you can make anything of it. If your parents raised you without any attempts to boost your self esteem and help you get over any timidity you suffer from, no amount of intelligence is going to make up for that.

Re:Grit?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I hear of somebody placing at the top of their class in college, I immediately recognize the wasted potential there. Placing at the top has little to no benefit outside of college as opposed to the things you could have been doing with your time there.

I've met people that were at the tops of various schools and they've mostly been dumbasses that could follow the rules and test well, but are completely worthless at anything that they weren't specifically taught to do. It's really sad to see all the time and effort ultimately wasted. Niels Bohr, for example, had a couple dozen ways of measuring the height of a building using a pressure gauge and the last one he tried was actually using it to measure the pressure difference.

I did go to college, it was one of the best in the country, but I never wasted the time trying to be the tops of the class. When I'd be the top of the class it was only because the class was of more general utility. But, you think I'm going to waste time getting 4.0 grades because that's what "smart people" do? Fuck no, and I'm all the smarter for not having wasted the time on such pointless bullshit.

Re:Phenmomenal raw intelligence got me through sch

[LQ]

I never studied. My phenomenal raw intelligence got me through. I could listen to the lecture, instantly digest the material, and understand it better than most of my classmates did even after they spent the evenings poring over books and lectures. Could I have done better if I studied? Absolutely. Would I have had nearly as much fun hanging out at the local watering hole during the evenings? No way. Grades are fleeting. Intelligence stays with you as long as you are above ground and cannot be taken away.

Taking you at face value, I would advise that you can only cruise for so long. At some point you have to combine a bit of work with that awesome mind to progress.

Perhaps more importantly...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given that there is some evidence that this 'grit' can be modified, potentially even at school age and during the course of school, is this really a question worth asking?

Barring advances that team neurology and team psychopharmacology have been rather less than inspiring about, 'intelligence' is what you are stuck with(or without). We know some things about what not to screw up if you want a better shot at it(lead is bad, childhood malnutrition isn't so good, etc.); but by the time kiddo hits school, your options have closed substantially.

So, instead of navel gazing about 'is grit or intelligence more important?', wouldn't it make more sense to suck it up, deal with the intelligences that you have, not those you may want or wish to have at some future time, and ask 'what is this 'grit' and how favorably does attempting to develop it compare to other possible uses of time?'

Mensa paradox.

[TapeCutter]

Being a member of mensa indicates you failed the selection criteria for membership in mensa.

Re:Mensa paradox.

[gstoddart]

Being a member of mensa, in my personal experience, makes you an insufferable ass who wants to brag about your IQ. Because everyone I've ever met who said they were in it, was an insufferable ass who wanted to brag about their IQ.

I have yet to meet a single person who joined who didn't come across as a complete tool.

I've been in a room full of nerds and geeks, and one person stated proudly they were in mensa, as if the rest of us should care.

The mocking was pretty incessant as everyone else let it be known how little they cared or respected that claim.

I find mensa far more interesting for the sheer number of incredibly smart people I've known who want nothing to do with it.

Re:Mensa paradox.

[gstoddart]

The incredibly smart people want nothing to do with it because the bar is too low. In relative terms, telling a smart person you were accepted by Mensa is roughly equivalent to telling a normal person you no longer shit your pants on a daily basis: good on you, but you were kind of expected to be past that point years ago.

I am not sure anybody sneers at Mensa because the bar is too low; at least not in my experience. But, hey, I'm not complaining that I have to hobnob with people who have an IQ of less than 200 so maybe I'm too stupid.

My experience with why people view Mensa with contempt is it has about as much meaning to us as telling us that you are wearing a sweater by Tommy Hilfiger ... it's shallow, self-aggrandizing, and pointless.

Interesting people come in all stripes. The ones who lead with "I'm smart, are you?" are mostly shallow idiots, even if they do score high on a test which otherwise doesn't predict anything meaningful about you.

It's a cocktail party with the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons -- nobody really cares about hanging out with some smug prick. Maybe a bunch of other smug pricks, but nobody else.

As I said, never met a single person who said "I'm in Mensa" wasn't a complete waste of oxygen.

Re:Rethink our emphasis on intelligence?!

[meustrus]

Just because they aren't teaching it well doesn't mean that's not what they were trying to teach. They've been trying and failing to teach people to be smart for as long as education has been available to disinterested children. For some reason we haven't figured out in however many millennia how to teach knowledge to anyone that isn't there of their own volition to learn it.

or...

[argStyopa]

...perhaps it's more subtle generally than some sort of "pop-psych" binary choice?

Seriously, people, are Slashdot articles really nothing more than clickbait any more?

Re:or...

[gweihir]

The articles have turned to crap a long time ago. The discussions are pretty good sometimes, if you filter out the 70% posturing and/or clueless idiots.

Nonproductive persistence

[Vintermann]

Gritty people sometimes exhibit what psychologists call "nonproductive persistence": They try, try again, says Dean MacFarlin though the result may be either unremitting failure or "a costly or inefficient success that could have been easily surpassed by alternative courses of action."

Well, maybe blaming them for that is just like blaming people for buying non-winning lottery tickets. Why didn't they do like that guy over there, and buy a winning ticket instead?

You quickly run into decidability problems when deciding on optimal strategies of inquiry in the general case. The only time you know with 100% certainty whether persistence will pay off, or whether it's time to give up and look around for other solutions, is when you basically already know the answer.

There's no way good solutions can be found without "wasting" a lot of effort on fruitless paths - and whether the waste and success happens in the same person, or over a large group of people, what difference does it make?

3rd place vs 1st place.

[gurps_npc]

Grit will take you to 3rd place.

Intelligence will take you to 1st.

Grit will make you the head of the Physics Department.

Intelligence will let you discover Relativity while working in a Patent office.

But the thing is you can't teach or give people Intelligence. You can however, teach Grit.

Intelligence vs Grit

[Cro Magnon]

My intelligence helped me in the areas that I had a natural aptitude. My grit got my through the areas that I didn't. I needed both to get me where I am today.

Neither

[PopeRatzo]

Education Debate: Which Is More Important - Grit, Or Intelligence?

Neither of those is important. What's important is how wealthy your parents are. That's the biggest determining factor in your success in education.

Re:Neither

[johanw]

[quote]Neither of those is important. What's important is how wealthy your parents are. That's the biggest determining factor in your success in education.[/quote]
Fortunately, that holds less in countries with a nog so right-extremistic view to economics than the US. This is one thing the west should take over from the former USSR: free education for everyone who shows talent.

Re:I'd say git intellisense.

[gweihir]

I use SVN, you insensitive clod!

Grit is overrated

[paiute]

It took me many years to realize that laziness was the best quality a person could have. A lazy person invented the shovel while the gritty geterdoners were still digging with their hands. A lazy person invented the backhoe when the industrious were busy digging with their shovels. A lazy person invented the automobile when their hard working neighbors were grooming their horses.

Re:Grit ..

[gweihir]

That happens when they never got challenged early enough. Personally, I am in the "high intelligence" group and I can well understood their problem. The way I dealt with this was to set myself challenges outside of school and to make sure that do not look down on others (well, except for the Dunning-Kruger sufferers). I also took school as a game where the goal was to get the highest possible grades with the least amount of work. That skill includes being able to recognize things that later get built upon and it has served me very well so far.

But I have seen several highly intelligent people that completely failed and started to look down on everybody, including people that were on their level or above. They then failed to learn things like sticking to a task for a longer time, planning things, dealing with things they had bad aptitude for, communicating with people, etc. The thing is that many highly intelligent people are "special needs" pupils that have a high risk of failing school education and general socialization unless competently helped. This is to the detriment of society as a whole, as these people will usually be highly productive later in life if properly cared for.

Intellegence vs. 'grit'

[vince.bardsley]

As a 32 year classroom teacher I agree that intelligence alone isn't a good measure. Given a dozen 'gifted' kids and a problem to be solved you end up with a dozen gifted kids and a problem. Given a dozen kids who know how to work and there will be progress on solving the problem (and a dozen kids who are better for having struggled with it).

Persistance

[PPH]

From TFA:

There's other evidence that grit isn't always desirable. Gritty people sometimes exhibit what psychologists call "nonproductive persistence"

I've worked at companies where the bosses pay is based on how many people report to him. He wants a large staff with 'grit'. Not some smart-ass engineer who trys to clean up the process and do the same job with 1/10th of the staff.

take the time

[moondo]

I agree that there are many other factors to consider besides intelligence. The question is how many points will you spend on each?

strength
dexterity
constitution
wisdom
charisma
intelligence

Re:Of course grit and openness garner higher grade

[werepants]

Here's the thing: this is a discussion that needs to happen, because the truth is that all sorts of things that are part of success in any school experience (getting homework in on time, understanding directions exactly, handling conflict and disputes well with the teacher or other students) are really measures of conscientiousness, not intelligence. This is also appropriate, because these same skills will help you be successful in life.

The problem is, nobody really talks about (or understands) what school is for. The prevailing idea is this very shallow concept that it is about filling your head with factual knowledge. That is an almost useless pursuit now that the answer to just about any question is trivially easy to find.

The truth is, it is about developing juveniles into successful adults, and this involves social skills, intellectual pursuits, and character development. There's also the unavoidable truth that school is a high-efficiency means to keep children contained and relatively safe, freeing parents up for work. If we don't recognize that, and have hard conversations about which elements to emphasize and why, we'll continue getting this haphazard approach that ends up working fairly well, but mostly by accident. In some ways I think we haven't had any coordinated rationale for our schooling practice since the early 1800's, when simple literacy was the big objective.

John Taylor Gatto on dumbing kids down

[Paul Fernhout]

https://johntaylorgatto.wordpr...
"Solve this problem and school will heal itself: children know that schooling is not fair, not honest, not driven by integrity. They know they are devalued in classes and grades, that the institution is indifferent to them as individuals. The rhetoric of caring contradicts what school procedure and content say, that many children have no tolerable future and most have a sharply proscribed one. The problem is structural. School has been built to serve a society of associations: corporations, institutions, and agencies. Kids know this instinctively. How should they feel about it? How should we?
As soon as you break free of the orbit of received wisdom you have little trouble figuring out why, in the nature of things, government schools and those private schools which imitate the government model have to make most children dumb, allowing only a few to escape the trap. The problem stems from the structure of our economy and social organization. When you start with such pyramid-shaped givens and then ask yourself what kind of schooling they would require to maintain themselves, any mystery dissipates--these things are inhuman conspiracies all right, but not conspiracies of people against people, although circumstances make them appear so. School is a conflict pitting the needs of social machinery against the needs of the human spirit. It is a war of mechanism against flesh and blood, self-maintaining social mechanisms that only require human architects to get launched.
I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises--no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system.
Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there.
Schools got the way they were at the start of the twentieth century as part of a vast, intensely engineered social revolution in which all major institutions were ov