Angela Lee Duckworth started working as a teacher when
she was 27 years old. She went to teach 7th graders math in public schools. She
realised that the difference between her best and worst students wasn't the IQ,
because some of those with the best IQ results were the ones that had the worst
grades in math.
After years working as a teacher, she perceived that
what education needs is a much better understanding of students and learning
from a motivational and psychological perspective. She wanders: “what if how
you learn in school doesn’t depend on how quickly you learn?”
Then she became a psychologist and started making
predictions about teachers, students, etc. and about their possibly future.
In all
those different situations one characteristic emerged, and it wasn’t social
intelligence, physical health or the IQ. It was grit. Grit is patience and
perseverance, having histamine, sticking with your future and living your life
like it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Grit is important for kids in school. She
discovered that grit is unrelated or even inversely related to the measures of
talent. We have to measure whether we have been successful. We need to be
gritty about getting our kids grittier.
Angela
Lee Duckworth seems to be a serious person that have researched a lot about
students and the way they should learn. I do believe that what she has been
doing during several years is going to be an important "discovery" in
education, as she confirms she has proved that it's not only the IQ what
defines the intelligence of a student, but the grit he/she has. I suppose this is a big step in our society, because bit by
bit we uncover new theories and have the ability to apply them into our
society, and this is how we develop as humans.
