We're Teaching Grit the Wrong Way

This week’s article summary is We're Teaching Grit the Wrong Way.

I have never been a fan of Star Trek but I know that Mr. Spock was all about reason, not emotion.

The article below posits that teachers and parents in trying to help their students and children develop qualities like grit, deferred gratification, and perseverance overemphasize reason and logic and should instead utilize more emotional motivators, including how one’s actions can help others.

I have spoken to kids countless times about effort, short-term sacrifice for long-term gain, and the benefits of persistence and willpower. Yet according to the article, my words of advice perhaps have not had a positive effect on students and might have exacerbated feelings of failure and even isolation.

Self-sacrifice always came easy to me. I was the type of kid (and to this day as an adult) who challenged myself to see how long I could go before breaking a $10 bill in my wallet. At college, I, unlike many of my friends, could easily bypass a spontaneous dorm party if I had to write a paper, study for a test, or complete a reading assignment. As Freud believed, my super ego was well developed and ruled over my id. For me, reason and logic were all I needed as motivators to develop grit, willpower, and persistence. Mr. Spock would concur.

Yet as the article below explains what works for Spock and me is not the case for all of us. Some need other reasons and motivations for denying immediate happiness for future benefits. Last week’s article summary spoke about how social humans are, and for many, this is the motivator for making personal sacrifices: how one’s behavior impacts others may be the carrot some need to develop personal habits like grit. For me it was personal, for others it’s social.

The next time I speak to students about the virtue of deferred gratification, I am definitely going to move beyond  how it will help the student as an individual and include how it can positively affect others. Motivation like inspiration needs to come from many directions to reach everyone.

Joe

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Let’s face it, for most students academic work isn’t intrinsically enjoyable. Even for the highly motivated ones, studying certain subjects can feel like pulling teeth, especially if it stands in the way of more pleasurable options like checking updates on social media. That’s where self-control would seem to be the key. Walter Mischel’s fabled “marshmallow” experiments and follow-up studies by other researchers have established the importance of deferring gratification to future success.

But the strategies most often used by educators and parents to get students to suppress the desire for immediate pleasure – building willpower and executive function – are precisely the wrong ones.

Besides having a poor long-term success rate in general, the effectiveness of willpower drops precipitously when people are feeling tired, anxious, or stressed. And, unfortunately, that is exactly how many of today’s students often find themselves.

In fact, telling students to get a grip and use willpower may make things worse, detracting from their ability to succeed in academic work and maintain relationships with others. Trying to teach non-cognitive skills like grit and self-control through a cognitive channel can set up a vicious cycle of increasing stress, failure, and social isolation.

Instead of preaching willpower to enhance self-control and grit, educators and parents should talk to young people about gratitude, compassion, and a sense of pride in their ability. These qualities nudge the mind to accept sacrifices to cooperate with and, thereby, build relationships with others. At the heart of cooperation with others is a willingness to sacrifice immediate self-interest in order to share with and invest in others. This builds positive character traits like trustworthiness, generosity, fairness, and diligence.

When a people feels grateful they will work harder and longer to pay others back as well as pay favors forward. When a people feel compassion, they will give time, money, effort, even a shoulder to cry on to another in need. When people feel proud, they will devote more effort to developing skills that others value, and will be admired for it. These emotions enhance a willingness to sacrifice for others because they increase the value that people place on future rewards relative to present ones.

What is the implication of all this for the social-emotional curriculums being developed in many schools? That educators should focus less on willpower and grit and more on the role of positive emotions – gratitude, compassion, and pride – which have a way of indirectly increasing willpower. These emotions ease the way to perseverance toward long-term goals, and they simultaneously make people act in ways that strengthen social relationships – something that benefits the health of body and mind and, indirectly, raises educational attainment itself.

           

Here are several examples from Emotional Success: The Power of Gratitude, Compassion, and Pride:

·         Students are praised for small steps toward a goal – “I’m really impressed with how hard you worked today; you’re getting closer to solving that problem.”

·         Students take a few moments daily or weekly to recall and focus on something they’re grateful for – a small kindness or favor someone has done for them that day, like someone helping with a math problem.

·         Doing a “reciprocity ring” – Students write on sticky notes something they need help with and post them on a board in the shape of a circle; then everyone, using different sticky notes, writes offers of help and puts them next to the problem they want to help solve. This generates gratitude and visually shows the interconnected web of support.

·         Engaging in brief (5-10 minute) mindfulness practice every day; this has been shown to enhance compassion.