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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."
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."
Balance. Intelligence is knowing when to give up and go back to the drawing board.
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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
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
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.
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.
... 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.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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.
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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.
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!)
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.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
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.
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.