Author Archives: Rebecca Gotlieb

Children and adolescents with greater empathy tend to be happier, more successful, more resilient, and more critical in their thinking. Dr. Michele Borba, educational psychologist and psychology expert on several TV programs, argues in Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in our All-About-Me World that we can help students accrue the “empathy advantage” by helping them develop 9 key habits to strengthen and utilize empathy. Given that today’s youngest generation is more self-absorbed than previous ones and is experiencing high rates of bullying, cheating, and mental health issues, it is critically important to help this generation understand the feelings and thoughts of other people, even when those other people are very different from oneself. This book will appeal to parents and educators, who are interested in fostering empathy, not only to raise kind children, but also to raise satisfied and successful ones.

Emotional literacy, or the ability to read cues of others’ emotional states, has been associated with better school performance. Skilled perspective-taking is associated with greater popularity. Kids and teenagers’ heavy digital media use (on average almost eight hours a day) can undermine the development of emotional literacy. Borba suggests that parents model appropriate use of technology, and have times when kids don’t use technology. She suggests also expressing feelings, teaching children a large vocabulary of emotional words, reading books and news stories that make them think about others’ feelings and situations, befriending a diverse group of people, and practicing reading emotions and taking perspective by giving children the opportunity to care for others.

Borba argues also for the importance of developing strong moral identities and moral imaginative abilities. She shows that the majority of today’s teenagers value their personal happiness over their being a good person, and parents contribute to teenagers’ under-valuing moral goodness by rarely praising character, even as they over-praise other accomplishments. Borba suggests parents teach children to value being the type of person who cares about others by explicating the family’s core values, modeling altruism, debating moral issues, reading fiction, and pausing to ask “what if” questions while reading.

Self-regulation, teamwork, and practicing kindness are three skills that help kids utilize their empathy abilities. Drawing on the work of Walter Mischel (reviewed here), Borba shows that self-regulatory abilities are associated with several important professional and health-related life outcomes. Parents and teachers can help by modeling calmness, teaching breathing exercises, and creating quiet spaces. Borba states that teamwork and collaboration make kids happier, healthier, and better academic performers, yet opportunities to spontaneously engage in collaboration are decreasing due to limited unstructured play time and the elimination of recess.

To help students learn to be team players, it is important for kids to see how they are similar to other people and see their success as linked to others’ success. Parents and teachers can praise teamwork above individual performance. To help kids practice kindness, the most important first step is to do something kind because doing one kind deed makes people more likely to do another, according to Borba. Kids should know that their parents value their being kind people. Parents can model kindness for their kids. They can help their children brainstorm ways to do kind things and then do those kind acts together. Borba reminds us that many kind gestures (e.g., giving a sincere compliment) do not cost a dime.

Finally, to experience the transformational power of empathy, children need moral courage and the ability to act as an altruistic leader. They need to develop an internal drive that compels them to help those others, even when they might experience repercussions for doing so. They also need to actively defend their values. Often time kids fail to demonstrate moral courage (e.g., in the face of bullying) because they feel powerless, they are unsure about whether intervening is appropriate, they are concerned about peers’ reactions, they think someone else will address the issue, or they are crippled by their feelings for a victim’s plight. Parents can help children develop moral courage and the ability to lead by modeling moral action, exposing children to heroes who can inspire them, rehearsing with kids what they might do if faced with a moral challenge, teaching kids that their ability to empathize can grow with time, and highlighting for them the impact that their good deeds have on others. By valuing moral goodness parents counter-act popular culture messages that place supreme value on fame and materialism.

With Borba’s description of these 9 helpful empathy habits, stories that illuminate the value of each, an explanation of the science supporting the habits, and a list of creative and age-specific examples of how to foster them, parents can help their children receive the empathy advantage.

Borba, M. (2016). Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-about-me World. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.

Imagine your son leaving for school with his homework forgotten on the kitchen table or your daughter’s soccer coach consistently giving her less playing time than you think she deserves. Jessica Lahey, middle school teacher, New York Times columnist, and mother of two, cautions parents against intervening in these and similar situations because protecting kids from their mistakes or mildly difficult circumstances can undermine their competence and autonomy. Her book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed, argues that overprotective parenting, which is all too common in today’s competitive culture, teaches kids that failure is bad, when really it can be a useful experience for helping children gain independence and confidence, develop grit, and maintain a love of learning. This book will help parents of toddlers to teens embrace failure in order to increase success.

Popular ideas about appropriate parent-child relationships in the U.S. have changed dramatically over the last few centuries and even in the last few decades. Most notably, Lahey argues that children have gone from being seen as “profitable to priceless” and parents are rightfully worried about the ways in which their parenting can adversely impact their children. She suggests that, to the extent possible in today’s hectic and competitive world, parents allow their children to have a childhood filled with carefree play, exploration, and indeed failure.

We all learn best, Lahey argues, when we are intrinsically motivated to learn. One notable and well-institutionalized violation of this principle is grading school work. Grades can undermine motivation and long-term learning. Parents can help counteract the damaging impact of grades by encouraging children to focus on setting and striving towards personal goals, rather than focusing primarily on grades. Small failures in school, when the stakes are relatively low, can help children avoid larger failures later. Parents can help by modeling for their children how to learn from failure and by teaching them a growth mindset, or the idea that with effort we can improve our skills and ability. They can help children understand the consequences of mistakes, provide feedback about challenging situations, provide emotional support when students encounter failure, praise effort towards addressing challenges, and make sure children know they are loved unconditionally.

The damage from protecting kids from failure is cumulative. On the other hand, when parents afford their children autonomy, the children are more likely to learn, explore, and stay focused and organized. Parents can help their children be autonomous in a number of different realms. Children should be expected to contribute to household work. Although parents can do these chores faster or better, children should understand that they are responsible for helping to maintain the place where they live. Parents should avoid interfering with children’s play and friendships as much as possible. Negotiating playground squabbles, resolving sibling disputes, and experiencing adolescent friendships grow and wane help children develop interpersonal skills that will be beneficial. Parents should avoid pressuring kids about their athletic performance or criticizing coaches and referees. Recently, parent-teacher relationships have eroded, but parents can support their children’s autonomy and learning when they show their children that they trust their teachers, have open communications with the teachers, model enthusiasm for learning (rather than drive for perfection), and encourage students to advocate for themselves to their teachers. Parents of college students should allow and require their children to be almost entirely autonomous, while they continue to show interest and support.

Two skills that undergo significant development during adolescence are executive functioning, or our ability to manage ourselves and our mental resources, and working memory, our ability to maintain and manipulate information in our mind. Parents and teachers can help shape adolescents’ environment to compensate for their not yet fully developed abilities by teaching students to notice the behaviors that proceed acting impulsively, giving students time to transition between activities, keeping a calendar, providing predictability in the teen’s life, writing instructions, setting clear expectations, teaching time management, and teaching active listening.   They can also help children get sufficient sleep and remain hydrated and well-fed.

Throughout The Gift of Failure Lahey acknowledges that letting students fail can be gut-wrenching, but she maintains that it is worth it. At one point as a teacher she realized that, “all of that [student] failure, failure that nearly gave me an ulcer, resulted in a great learning experience for the students.” With the advice in this book and discipline on the part of teachers and parents to allow their children to fail, children may begin to experience more failure, more learning, and ultimately more success—hopefully with fewer parent and teacher ulcers.

Lahey, J. (2015). The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. New York, NY: Haper Collins Publishing Inc.

“Who you are is more important than what you know.” This principle forms the basis of The Formative Five: Fostering Grit, Empathy, and Other Success Skills Every Student Needs. Author Thomas R. Hoerr, who served as the head of the New City School in St. Louis for 34 years and teaches at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, argues that our schools needs to adapt to shape students into good spouses, workers, and citizens. We need to help students navigate flexibly the rapid changes they are likely to encounter (e.g., in the fragility of our natural environment, ubiquity of computers, and demographic diversity in society).

In an era when accountability and standardized tests dominate, it can be difficult to get school administrators, teachers, or parents to focus on social and emotional skills, but these skills may be what matters most for success. Specifically, Hoerr identifies five skills that make students successful and that students can refine with good teaching. Two of these are relationship oriented skills—empathy and embracing diversity—and three are about how people engineer their own thoughts and actions—self-control, integrity, and grit. This book is a useful guide for helping teachers and school principals foster “the formative five,” as it is filled with practical tips, recommended readings, descriptions of prototypical students who do or do not possess each skill, and quizzes about one’s own beliefs and practices around the skill.

The first of the formative five skills is empathy—adopting another person’s perspective to understand how that person feels. Empathy, Hoerr argues, is not simply taking another person’s perspective; rather it requires learning also to value and respect that person. Beyond shaping people who treat one another well, empathy facilitates success in business. Hoerr suggests teaching empathy by valuing growth in empathic abilities, teaching students to listen closely to others, and creating safe spaces for students to share personal stories.

The second of the relationship oriented skills, embracing diversity, involves appreciating the differences among the people with whom one interacts. Exercising this skill can feel uncomfortable; some may even reject the need for it. Indeed, our evolutionary roots as tribal people may partially explain why embracing diversity does not always come naturally. Nonetheless, in our diversifying world this skill not only is necessary, but also it can facilitate learning about people’s experiences. To fully embrace diversity we need to understand the complex history of discrimination and inequality in our society. We ought to guide students in understanding their own identities and how that shapes their interactions with others. Creating situations in which students can work collaboratively with diverse peers can help students embrace diversity. Schools need to ensure that all students are safe and treated with dignity.

Students benefit from developing skill in demanding the most of themselves. Hoerr cites the work of Walter Mischel (reviewed here) arguing that self-control—one’s ability to modulate one’s own actions and delay gratification—can have a major impact on one’s long-term well-being. Helping students to set goals and to be mindful of their current actions and the implications for their future can help them develop self-control. Hoerr references Angela Duckworth’s work about grit (reviewed here), or tenacity and perseverance, to argue that when we help shift students’ attitudes about what it takes to succeed, we prepare them for success and the rewards that come with sustained effort, deliberate practice, and pursuit of a passion. Especially given that today kids are praised for even minor accomplishments, it is important that students learn that to truly succeed they need to persist through failures. We can help students be “grittier” by touting the importance of grit.

The fifth skill is integrity, which has to do with being honest in one’s public actions, living in accordance with one’s personal values, and working to address social problems. To foster integrity it is helpful to model honesty, define integrity, highlight opportunities to act with integrity, and explain that it can be difficult to act with integrity.

Hoerr concludes by arguing that schools need a cultural shift to foster “the formative five.” Creating the desired schools culture is facilitated by ensuring that teachers, parents, administrators, and students all have strong relations and effective communication channels with one another. That the federal Every Student Succeeds Act requires the measurement of at least one nonacademic skill is a promising move towards focusing on personal skills that help students succeed. By developing students skill in empathizing, embracing diversity, exerting self-control and grit, and acting with integrity we can help raise a generation of students of whom we will be proud not only for what they know, but more importantly, for the people that they are.

 

Hoerr, T. R. (2016). The Formative Five: Fostering Grit, Empathy, and Other Success Skills Every Student Needs. ASCD.

 

What if there existed a secret recipe for curing nearly all of our most serious societal ills? Dr. Anthony Biglan, a Senior Scientist at the Oregon Research Institute and an expert on the prevention of problematic behaviors in children and adolescents, may have that very recipe. In his new book, The Nurture Effect: How the Science of Human Behavior can Improve Our Lives and Our World, Biglan argues that that our social and health problems would be greatly lessened—and we would have a more fulfilled and healthy citizenry—if we had a more caring society. Specifically, we would benefit from our families, schools, and communities being more nurturing and from our economic and political practices being more equitable and far-sighted. He argues that recent advances in psychological, behavioral, and developmental sciences have shown that the root cause of most of our major social challenges is our experiences in insufficiently nurturing environments. Through a series of concrete action items targeted towards parents, teachers and schools, regular citizens, and policy makers, Biglan shows us steps we can take to bring about this improved society.

After providing an overview of recent advances in the behavioral sciences that support the creation of nurturing environments, Biglan argues that families and schools are especially important environments for fostering nurturing relations. In homes and schools, we need to reward those who behave in a way that is considerate of others, help them think flexibly about solutions to challenging situations, teach them to regulate their emotions, and minimize the extent to which they feel coerced. To illustrate the implementation of these practices Biglan discusses intervention programs that have helped individuals and families create habits that nurture.

Biglan espouses B.F. Skinner’s idea that environments shape behavior. Most troubled teens are the product of environments that were insufficiently nurturing. Teens need limits, as well as, healthy relations with peers. They benefit from being around other teens with healthy and productive habits. He argues that we need schools to consistently implement evidence-based teaching practices, reinforce students’ good behavior, and let student learn by engaging in self-directed discovery.

While families and schools are vital places for increasing nurturance, Biglan states that we need also to make more nurturing the larger social structure in which families and schools are embedded. There are many organizations that address a single societal ill (e.g., drunk driving, homelessness, child abuse), but there are few umbrella organizations that attempt to address the root cause of all these problems, which is what Biglan argues we really need. Additionally, we need to curb predatory marketing practices, just as we did so effectively a few decades ago with curbing cigarette advertising, especially to teens. Beyond marketing, our materialistic culture leaves most of us feeling perpetually dissatisfied because we feel that what we have is never enough.

Biglan is concerned about growing economic inequality. He argues that many of us fail to conceive of just how challenging it is to live in poverty and just how easy it would be for even responsible and prosperous citizens to find themselves in poverty. We all suffer when poverty is widespread because such poverty leads to prevalent long-term health and behavioral problems. Biglan urges action to reduce child poverty. He argues that minimizing government spending, including on child poverty, is short-sighted because spending now could prevent much larger expenditures later.

Biglan concludes by sharing his vision for a society in which everyone enters adulthood ready to cultivate nurturing relationships and to create nurturing environments. The four most critical steps to help young people develop into caring adults is to model for them how to: 1) minimize toxic influences; 2) reward prosocial behavior; 3) limit opportunities to engage in aversive behavior; and 4) promote a flexible approach to living in accordance with one’s values in the face of challenging circumstances. Stress can erode a person’s health and the most common source of stress is managing other peoples’ coercive behavior. As such, for the sake of our collective health and well-being, we need to support one another in “turning the other cheek” in response to other people’s bad behavior, developing empathy, and paying attention to the present moment. With the steps Biglan suggests, we can all contribute to bringing about a social movement focused on creating nurturing environments to bring about, in turn, a brighter future.

 

Biglan, A. (2015). The nurture effect: How the science of human behavior can improve our lives and our world. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

 

In our quest to assess and compare educational outcomes of students, teachers, schools, districts, states, and nations might we be losing sight of the characteristics of a fulfilling educational experience? Counting What Counts: Reframing Education Evaluation, a 2016 book edited by Yong Zhao, argues that this may be the case. He and his colleagues suggest ways to measure what matters so that we can create a more personalized, diverse, authentic, collaborative, and ultimately successful educational system. Zhao, a professor in the college of education at the University of Oregon and a professorial fellow at Victoria University in Australia, is a prolific writer of topics related to changes in education as a function of globalization and technology. Counting What Counts and other works of his like Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon will appeal to those disillusioned by America’s testing obsession, interested in developing students’ talents outside of just reading and math (e.g., in the arts or leadership), and concerned about creating an educational system that will prepare the members of our workforce with the skills they will need to make our economy prosper.

Zhao states that, as nations focus on improving standardized test scores, they may indeed produce better test takers. Yet, they may lose sight of their larger goal of creating a well-educated citizenry and diverse and functional work force. He and his colleagues explain that our current testing system is flawed in several ways. First, motivation and inter- and intra-personal skills matter tremendously for one’s success in life, but these skills are rarely tested. Second, thriving workforces have people with a diversity of interests, talents, and perspectives. Standardized testing, which creates a culture that values a homogenized student body, is counter-productive to creating the diverse workforce in which economies thrive (not to mention, in which individuals feel fulfilled by their ability to develop their natural strengths). In particular, in an era when we are able to spend more of our resources on goods that satisfy psychological, rather than physical, needs there is growing demand for traditionally undervalued skills, such as artistic skills. As such, we neglect at our own peril to cultivate these. Finally, standardized tests dampen creativity and entrepreneurship. They do not test skills that matter for innovation and success, such as working with people of other cultures, communicating with diverse others, thinking complexly about global challenges. They do not measure self-confidence, hopefulness, social capital, teamwork, conscientiousness, openness to new experiences, empathy, curiosity, and passion. Further, the limited skills that are measured by common standardized tests (e.g., IQ tests, SATs, PISA) are only marginally correlated with measures of long term success.

As flawed as current standardized testing schemes are, Zhao recognizes that testing is valuable and necessary for helping students succeed, holding educators and educational institutions accountable, and differentiating among students. As such, Zhao argues for overhauling current accountability systems. A redefined testing system might improve the quality of education that students receive. Throughout Counting What Counts, Zhao and his colleagues discuss the benefits and limitations of several alternative tools that could be used to measure some traits that matter for academic and personal success. He argues that changing the testing culture matters because some of the most important skills we hope to instill in students, such as creativity, may not need to be taught per se, but rather, students need to grow in a culture where those skills are valued.

Finally, Zhao concludes with a beautiful, idealistic vision for education and the role that changing assessment systems play in bring about that vision. He calls for a paradigm shift that: 1) values personalized education; 2) focuses on long-term success, rather than short-term measures of knowledge retention; 3) is mindful of unintended consequences that can result from focusing exclusively on particular outcomes; 4) assesses students in a way that is authentic to how they will use their knowledge and the skills they value; and 5) promotes collaboration among the assessors and the assessed, so that there is comprehensive consensus about whether what is being assessed matters. Although perhaps hard to realize, the educational vision Zhao articulates is one in which students are likely to thrive and feel fulfilled. We would be well served to work towards bringing about Zhao’s attractive vision for our educational system in order to support our students and our work force.

 

Zhao, Y. (Ed.). (2016). Counting what counts: Reframing education evaluation. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

 

Never has it been so easy to acquire a breadth of information rapidly. At the same time there is a proliferation of misinformation and manipulative assertions. Information seekers must learn to be critical consumers. In A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age Daniel J. Levitin suggests ways to evaluate claims that are made with numbers, words, and scientific logic. Levitin is the Dean of Social Science at the Minerva School and part of the faculty at UC Berkeley’s Hass School of Business. He is also the author of The Organized Mind.

Levitin warns that claims made with numbers often appear to the uncritical consumer as inarguably true. Critical consumers of numbers recognize that just because something is precise (i.e., specific) does not mean that it is accurate (i.e., true). He reminds his reader that statistics are created by people at every stage in the process. People determine what to count, how to count it, how to analyze what has been counted, and what to report. At each of these stages humans can intentionally or unintentionally manipulate numbers. Thus, critical consumers check whether statistics seem plausible using basic reasoning skills. For example, critical consumers know the differences among the various types of averages (i.e., mean, median, and mode), understand the relation among averages and range, and consider whether averages were calculated using a sensible sample. One can evaluate sampling by considering whether the sample was: 1) composed of sub-samples that ought not to be combined, 2) divided in such a way as to obscure a larger truth, and 3) representative. Levitin suggests that to be critical consumers of graphically presented data we ought to consider how axes are constructed and labeled (e.g., do they depict the full range of the data?). Critical consumers of numbers understand that correlations can be coincidental, explained by a third variable, or not practically important. They recognize that estimating a data point between existing pieces of data (interpolation) is not a perfect science and yet can often yield good estimates, while estimating a value outside the range of one’s data (extrapolation) can be riskier. Finally, and perhaps most critically, Levitin urges his readers not to be intimidated by numbers, not to accept them at face-value, and to test whether the numbers are plausible.

Levitin argues that humans learn from the stories and claims of other people. As such, in the information age, when it is easy for many people to make erroneous claims, we must be critical consumers of others’ words. Critical consumers of words evaluated alleged experts’ expertise. For example, they ask who determined that the expert was indeed an expert? Even if someone is an expert in one domain, the critical consumer questions whether the expert’s authority extends to the relevant domain at hand. The critical consumer recognizes that expertise is relative, experts can be wrong, and experts can disagree. Critical consumers know that some publications and websites are more reputable than others, and they seek out signs of the rigor with which claims in a given publication were verified or supported.

Science and the scientific method have proven invaluable in helping us determine what is or is not true about the world. Critical consumers must evaluate the way in which individuals discover truths and construct arguments. Levitin explains three different ways in which people typically come to understand how the world works. They can deduce by moving from general observations to specific predictions. They can induce by using a collection of facts to explain a general principle. Finally, as Sherlock Holmes often did, they can engage in abductive reasoning by using observations to construct a theory that accounts for those observations. Levitin enumerates several logical fallacies to help us become critical consumers who do not fall prey to those fallacies. For example, he helps the reader think about how to detect phenomena that may appear to be correlated. Levitin warns of the danger of not knowing what one does not know. In scientific and practical thinking, this can lead one to erroneous conclusions.

Levitin ends with four real-world instances in which he applied his suggestions about logical reasoning. He reminds us that we are fortunate to live in the information age because so much knowledge is available to us at all times. He argues that in exchange for the ease with which we can access information we must evaluate the information we encounter. Readers of A Field Guide to Lies will inoculate themselves from much of the deception they might encounter.

Levitin, D. J., author. (2016). A field guide to lies: Critical thinking in the information age. New York, New York: Dutton.

 

A uniquely actionable new book of learning sciences principles that can improve teaching and learning has come in the form of The ABC’s of How We Learn: 26 Scientifically Proven Approaches, How They Work, and When to Use Them. This book, inspired by a popular course at Stanford University entitled The Core Mechanics of Learning, is written by Daniel L. Schwartz, Dean of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, Jessica M. Tsang an instructor at Stanford and a cognitive neuroscientist with expertise in effective classroom learning techniques, and Kristen P. Blair, a child development researcher and instructor at Stanford with expertise in technologies that support STEM learning.

The ABC’s of How We Learn starts from the premise that we all teach one another, and we all need to learn. As such, improving how we teach and learn, including tailoring strategies to our present circumstances is useful. The authors offer 26 alphabetized principles of learning and practices that support knowledge acquisition. The book does not profess to be a comprehensive account of every principle that can improve learning; rather, it offers several strategies that improve learning and the contexts in which each strategy might help. While presenting and integrating high level psychological and learning sciences theories and evidence, this text is accessible to any reader interested in improving his or her learning efficiency and experience. Especially helpful is the fact that the authors have grouped the 26 principles into a handful of broad issues that may be of concern to educators, such as how to support learners in building conceptual understanding, how to motivate learners, and how to promote learning through collaboration.

Each chapter, which corresponds to a learning principle represented by a letter of the alphabet, is explained in a way that makes the principle not only easily understandable, but also easy to implement. Each principle is defined, the theory accounting for the success of the principle is explained, uses of the principle are discussed, and the conditions under which it is most effective are enumerated. The ways in which the technique can be detrimental to learning are also outlined. Finally, examples of effective and ineffective implementation of the technique are included at the end of each chapter. After the full description of each of the 26 principles, the authors provide a very brief summary that users can reference to refresh themselves on the principles in the future.

The varied learning principles in this book highlight the many fruitful paths by which learning can take place. The book includes strategies that might be familiar and intuitive such as providing feedback, opportunities to observe experts, and opportunities for meaningful practice. Other strategies outlined include how to make learning exciting and preparing for learning by being well-rested. For example, in the chapter entitled “Z is for Zzzzzz…” the authors state that as productive scholars have long experienced and intuited and as the past 15 years of sleep research has shown, for deep learning to take place we need to get sufficient sleep. Sleep supports attentiveness during learning and memory consolidation after learning. The authors also include less well-known strategies for improving learning such as assuring students that they belong in the present learning setting, drawing on our five-senses and our bodies to learn abstract concepts, creating works of art and other sharable products, and engaging in imaginative play. Imaginative play, for example, helps students understand that one idea can represent another (e.g., a toy doll can represent a real person), and allows them to practice the norms of social interactions and the cognitive control that they require. It allows children to think independently and creatively.

Just as everyone needs to learn their ABC’s before they can read and learn from texts, every teacher and student can benefit from understanding the ABC’s of how we learn to improve their learning experience.

 

Schwartz, D. L., Tsang, J. M., & Blair, K. P. (2016). The ABCs of how we learn: 26 scientifically proven approaches, how they work, and when to use them. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Angela Duckworth, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a 2013 MacArthur Genius Fellow, is driven by a desire to “use psychological science to help kids thrive.” Her new book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance can help parents, teachers, coaches do just that. In Duckworth’s lexicon grit is a unique combination of a passion for a pursuit and perseverance to achieve a goal related to that passion. She explains why grit is so important for achieving success, what the personal qualities are that contribute to grittiness, and how a culture can help make individuals gritty. Duckworth’s dad frequently reminded her as a child that she is “no genius,” but she argues that she and others can become a genius through the dogged pursuit of their passion.

Duckworth examined the personal qualities of national spelling bee champions, West Point Cadets, and U.S. urban public school students. She found that for each of these groups of young people the ability to persist after failure, a constant drive to improve, and a sense of personal direction were more critical for success than talent or aptitude. Yet, talent is alluring. We have a “naturalness bias”—a preference for people who seem effortlessly skilled in a domain. Duckworth warns however, that we should ward against an emphasis on talent. In the corporate world for example, terminating and promoting based on perceived talent (a difficult construct to measure) can undermine a company’s growth and lead to corruption.

Duckworth notes that success results from the accumulation of a multitude of minor accomplishments and consistency of commitment. With effort we become more skillful, and we can exercise our skills more productively. Talent alone cannot produce achievement; we achieve only through dedicated effort. That is, we must stick with problems and challenges that matter to us, set big picture as well as detailed goals, remain flexible in how we pursue those goals, rise from failure, and avoid spending energy on tasks that do not help us accomplish our goals.

Fortunately, we can cultivate grittiness. Indeed, more of the variance in grittiness among people is due to experience than genetics. Further, older people tend to be grittier than younger people, which may be due to grit developing with maturity.

Duckworth outlines the qualities of gritty individuals. They are passionate about their work, and that passion drives their success. Determining the object of one’s passion takes more time than we typically realize. Much like developing passionate feelings for a romantic partner, we should acknowledge that developing a passion for work may not occur through “love at first sight.” Also, like a partner, every job comes with its share of imperfections. People can reflect upon what matters to them and what they enjoy thinking about to determine their passion. Having a sense of purpose, or a sense that one’s work can contribute to a societal good, is another dimension of passion. Grittier people are more driven than less gritty people to seek meaning in their work and to help others.

Gritty people do not merely practice more than others; they practice in a more deliberative way by setting goals, focusing intently, seeking feedback, self-quizzing, and easily bouncing back from setbacks. Interestingly, gritty people feel as though practice is both harder and more enjoyable than do less gritty people. They believe that effort now can help them create a better future. They tend to have growth mindsets and believe they can change. For those of us working to cultivate our grit, setting routines can make engaging in consistent practice easier.

Duckworth offers tips for how to cultivate grit through parenting. “Tough love” is effective; we should give our children both freedom and limits, affection and rules. Parents should seek to be warm, respectful, and demanding. Getting kids involved in extracurricular activities is an effective way to promote grittiness. Extracurricular involvement, especially when it lasts for more than 2 years of high school, is associated with high grades and self-esteem, and it predicts college graduation and post-graduate earnings. Duckworth expresses concern about the income-based disparity in access to participation in extracurricular activities. Parents can also make grit part of their children’s identity, which will make it easier to be gritty. When an individual associates being gritty with membership in a group she cares about, she is more likely to see herself as gritty and act as such.

Fortunately we can all cultivate our grittiness. It seems to be one of the few personal characteristics that does not become less adaptive in large quantities. The pursuit of grit is really the pursuit of greatness. Duckworth argues convincingly that with a big dose of passion and perseverance (i.e., grit) we may all be able to be geniuses.

 

Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Schools may be vehicles for achieving our idealized society because they allow us to mold young people to bring about positive societal change. As such, we need to make careful choices about what and how we teach students. Dr. Joel Westheimer, University of Ottawa Research Chair in Democracy and Education, advances these ideas in What Kind of Citizen?: Educating Our Children for the Common Good.

Westheimer suggests several changes we should make in schools. Too often students perceive school as a struggle between the demands adults place on them and their desire to pursue their own passions. To improve students’ experiences schools should seek to be relevant to contemporary problems, offer new interpretations of old “facts”, change students’ perspectives, encourage question asking, embrace controversy, and push for critical thinking. Standardized tests and curricula often demand the opposite—e.g., one correct perspective, deference to authority, and recitation of facts—and yet it is the former set of skills that are likely to help us create a better citizenry, Westheimer argues.

Our push to align curricula and establish accountability has restricted teachers’ autonomy and creativity about what and how they teach. This has contributed to the mistrust of teachers. It reduces teachers’ freedom to act in the best interest of their students. This accountability push has limited students’ learning; rather than being taught a breadth of subjects and deep, critical thinking skills, students drown in reading and mathematics practice. We have become so obsessed with student test scores, according to Westheimer, that every decision about schools and students has come to be justified around those scores. That young kids are coming to school hungry and without access to quality food is not enough of a reason to feed them; we do it because it will increase their test score performance. Westheimer suggests that if we focused less on measuring reading and math skills, educators might create innovative measures of thinking skills that are critical for good citizens.

Westheimer outlines three types of citizens that citizenship education typically seeks to foster. One is the personally responsible citizen who obeys laws, gives to charity, acts conscientiously in his community, and treats others with integrity. The second is the participatory citizen who leads or participates in community organizations or activities with the hope that doing so will improve the community. The final type of citizen is social-justice oriented; she critically analyses structural problems in her community’s social, political, and economic order and thinks independently about causes of and solutions to the problems she sees. The type of citizen that schools try to cultivate is reflective of the society that the school community idealizes. Westheimer argues that the personally responsible citizen alone is not enough to bring about a desirable society; we need people who will get involved in the community and work on the root of problems within it. He gives examples of citizenship programs that effectively taught thinking skills and fostered citizenship skills aligned with local values. These hands-on initiatives have helped students appreciate that the point of learning is to be able to contribute. They helped students to be informed and curious, and they helped ward off our culture’s strong individualistic tendencies.

Westheimer concludes by countering seven common myths about education. Whereas some think that national standards raise the quality of education, educational experiences are contingent upon human connections that we are not currently able to measure well. While we too often mistake order and regimentation for learning, these qualities may not actually promote learning. They do, however, seem to be associated with behavioral problems in kids. Some educators believe that schools must be democratic to teach about democracy but, direct instruction may be equally effective. Some argue that knowledge must precede action; a reciprocal relation and oscillation between action and the pursuit of knowledge may be best. Some mistakenly believe that teaching critical thinking means not teaching facts. We should be teaching facts and basic skills, but do so in meaningful contexts so that students learn facts and how to think about them. Some argue that there is no place for politics in schools; actually, exposing student to a range of political viewpoints will give them an opportunity to think deeply and form their own opinions. Finally, some believe that community-based learning experiences must run smoothly for them to be a good learning experience. Westheimer argues that students benefit from learning about the struggle that goes into contributing to community work.

In Wertheimer’s vision, students who ask questions, consider multiple perspectives, appreciate the malleability of facts, and comfortably engage in controversial issues possess the citizenship skills that will help us shape a better society.

Westheimer, J. (2015). What kind of citizen?: Educating our children for the common good. New York: Teachers College Press.

Tony Wagner, a life-long educator and the author of Creating Innovators and The Global Achievement Gap, and Ted Dintersmith, a venture capitalist and the executive producer and funder of the documentary Most Likely to Succeed, argue that schools are stifling the skills students most need to succeed as ethical citizens and productive employees, while forcing them to learn pointless information superficially. In Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing our Kids For the Innovation Era, Wagner and Dintersmith argue that schools are harming students by stunting their ability to pursue their passions and gain hands-on experience, disillusioning teachers, and perpetuating a divided and classist society.

In an age where so much knowledge is easily found on Google, there is little advantage in carrying a lot of information in one’s own mind. What is valuable is the ability to ask critical questions, synthesize information to develop opinions and work with diverse others to achieve broad goals. But our educational system—at the prekindergarten through college level—focuses on giving students knowledge rather than training them to be thinkers.

Schools are preparing students poorly because our education system is guided by a flawed understanding of the purpose of education. The purpose of compulsory education should be to build strong moral character, prepare individuals for the responsibilities of citizenship, equip students with career skills, help students work towards a deep passion, and inspire them to make a positive impact in the world. Instead, we place a tremendous amount of focus on students’ tests scores, class rank, and admissions to colleges.

One concern that many citizens express about our educational system is that our international ranking on standardized test performance is mediocre. The fact that the U.S. performs only modestly on these international rankings ought not to be too grave a concern. The tests do not measure the most critical skills for success, such as creativity and collaboration. Another common concern about our educational system is that students in schools with more resources are getting a better education than students in other schools. Wagner and Dintersmith argue that more concerning than this equity issue is that every student, regardless of the resources of the school, is being taught based on an outdated, industrial-era teaching model.

Wagner and Dintersmith describe the 20^th and 21^st century skills that were and are needed across academic domains. They discuss the extent to which we are or are not teaching these skills and examine how we can more effectively teach 21^st century skills like communication, collaboration, problem solving, and decision making. We should reduce the amount of lecturing in favor of more applied learning. The Socratic Method and guided self-discovery, for example, are effective ways to teach. Students should have more opportunities to practice and receive feedback about their oral and written communication. Rather than teaching students within strict disciplinary confines, there should be more opportunities for interdisciplinary learning with courses organized around a particular question or problem.

The authors challenge the conventional wisdom that a college degree is the best way to secure a comfortable and productive career. The cost of college is astronomical, and students learn too little while in college. Neither the way that colleges are ranked relative to one another nor the incentive structure for professors are designed to promote student learning. Most university provosts continue to believe that their students are well prepared for post-college work, even as business leaders assert the contrary. We use college degrees as a way to make assumptions about peoples’ competency, but this prejudice is beginning to crumble as industry leaders like Google realize that degrees are not the most effective way to cull out the most talented individuals.

Wagner and Dintersmith take aim at the multi-billion dollar test preparation industry. They argue that student performance need not be fit to a bell-curve, that tests ought not to be timed, and students’ score range rather than precise score should be reported. In our eagerness to test and assess, we have lost sight of what is important for students to learn.

Wagner and Dintersmith argue for several reforms: we need to help students develop motivation, not stamp it out; students should be supported in seeing how their educational experiences connects to their broader goals; they should be given time to explore their passions and provided with guided work experience. We should award diplomas of mastery rather than diplomas based on the amount of time in school. Teachers’ work load should be reduced, and we should trust them more; college should no longer be touted as the best post-secondary option. Charter schools have taken innovative steps towards making these changes. Their example may bring about the major reform the authors seek.

Wagner, T. & Dintersmith, T. (2015). Most likely to succeed: Preparing our kids for the innovation era. New York: Scribner.