THE KEY TO SUCCESS? GRIT

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.