GRIT AND CHARACTER: CHILDREN SUCCEED WHO HAVE IT; THOSE WHO DON'T WON'T
I. GED DEGREES ARE WORTHLESS. IQ or intelligence, by itself, has little to do with a child's ultimate success. America once believed the contrary: that what schools develop, and what a high school degree certifies, is cognitive skill. Thus, if a teenager has proven this skill through passing the GED exam, then she doesn't have to waste her time actually finishing high school. We now know this is false. In terms of all kinds of important future outcomes - annual income, unemployment rate, divorce rate, use of illegal drugs and college accomplishments - GED holders look exactly like every other high school drop-out. Yes, the GED measures intelligence. But it signifies nothing more.
II. THE ACQUISITION OF NON-COGNITIVE SKILLS SUCH AS GRIT, CURIOSITY AND CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. These are what economists refer to as noncognitive skills, that psychologists call personality traits and that the rest of us sometimes think of as character. Developing many other kinds of skill - such as in vocabulary and math - is a simple matter of starting earlier and practicing more. If you want to perfect your foul shot, shooting 200 free throws every afternoon is going to be more helpful than shooting 20. If you're in fourth grade, reading 40 books over the summer is going to improve your reading ability more than 4. But we can't get better at overcoming disappointment by working harder at it; children don't lag behind in curiosity simply because they didn't start doing curiosity drills at an early enough age.
III. PERRY PRESCHOOL PROJECT. In this 1960s war on poverty experiment, children 4 years of age were selected from low-income, low IQ, inner-city black parents and then immersed in a high quality two-year pre-school program. The Perry Project for a long time was considered something of a failure because by the time the children were in the third grade, their IQ scores had deflated and were no better than a control group's. However, years later, an economist looking at the Perry data discovered that there had been very positive effects. Compared to the control group, the Perry children were more likely to have graduated from high school, more likely to be employed at age 27 , and less likely ever to have been arrested or spent time on welfare.
IV. ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES STUDY. (Commonly called ACE) From a mostly middle class Kaiser HMO data base, researchers conducted surveys on thousands of adults to determine whether they, as children, had experienced any of 10 different categories of adverse childhood experience: physical and sexual abuse, physical and emotional neglect, divorced or separated parents, parents incarcerated/ addicted, etc. A child who had suffered one of these conditions got an ACE score of "1", two conditions, "2" etc. The correlations between adverse childhood experiences and negative adult outcomes were so powerful that they "stunned" the researchers. People with ACE scores of 4 or higher were twice as likely to smoke, 7X more likely to be alcoholics, and 7X more likely to have had sex before age fifteen. They were twice as likely to have been diagnosed with cancer, twice as likely to have heart disease, twice as likely to have liver disease, four times as likely to suffer from emphysema or chronic bronchitis. On some charts, the slopes were especially steep: adults with an ACE score above 6 were 30X more likely to have attempted suicide than those with an ACE score of 0. And men with an ACE score above 5 were 46 more likely to have injected drugs. Even when researchers discounted for self-destructive behaviors like smoking and heavy drinking, the negative health effects on things such as heart disease were still pronounced. The key channel causing the damage: the body's hormonal reaction to the stress, precipitated by the childhood adversity. The effects were "written" on the child's body ... deep under their skin where they remained for the rest of its life.
V. EXECUTIVE FUNCTION (the ability to deal with confusing and unpredictable situations) Researchers long have known that poverty correlates strongly with executive function, but they didn't know why. When researchers used statistical techniques to factor out child adversity influences, the apparent poverty effect disappeared completely. It wasn't poverty itself that was messing with the executive-function abilities of poor kids. It was the stress that usually goes along with poverty.
VI. HIGH-LICKING AND GROOMED LAB RATS. A researcher (Meaney) while handling baby rat pups, inadvertently noticed a difference between pups after they were put back in the litter: some were licked and groomed by their mothers while other mothers ignored their pups. Tests determined that human handling of pups always produced anxiety and a flood of stress hormones. Researchers divided the pups into two categories: high lick and groomed (LG) pups vs. low (LG) pups. Factoring out genetics (by putting pups with foster mothers) the differences in "character" between the two groups was striking. Over the full course of their lives, the high-LG pups excelled: They were better at mazes. They were more social. They were more curious. They were less aggressive. They had more self-control. They were healthier. They lived longer.
VII. HUMAN CHILD DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH. Into the 1960s, research in this field was dominated by the "behaviorists." Non-behaviorist researchers created the "Strange Situation" experiment: 12 month old human babies with their mothers were put into a lab set up as a playground. Then the mothers were asked to leave the lab, sometimes leaving the baby alone and sometimes with strangers. When the mother returned, researchers observed two different categories of baby reaction: 60% ("securely attached") greeted the returning mother happily, sometimes tearfully, sometimes with joy; 40% ("anxiously attached") did not have a happy reunion, lashing out, pretending to ignore the mother, etc. Not surprisingly in retrospect- since this was exactly the opposite of what the behaviorists had expected - the parents of the anxious babies had parenting styles that were detached or conflicted or hostile. This difference in early parental care had long-term consequences; the researchers discovered that this single measure of baby attachment could predict with 77% accuracy which children would never graduate from high school. A more accurate predictor than IQ or test scores or the natural abilities of the child! Bottom line: improving a child's attachment is the most powerful lever for improving later academic outcomes, far more important than infant nutrition, housing, the vocabulary richness of the home, etc.
VIII. KIPP CHARTER SCHOOLS (Knowledge is Power Program) These charter schools were started in New York City for inner city kids and involved a new, immersive style of schooling, combining long days of high-energy, high-intensity classroom instruction with an elaborate program of attitude adjustment and behavior modification. Initially, the formula seemed to have worked: in 1999 the KIPP students earned the highest scores of any school in the Bronx and the fifth-highest in all of New York City. Unheard of. But longer term, the results of PIPP were not so clear-cut. Six years after their high-school graduation, just 21 percent of the KIPP initial class-- eight students-- had completed a four-year college degree. The problem: KIPP set up graduating students very well academically, but it didn't prepare them emotionally or psychologically. "We went from having that close-knit family, where everyone knew what you were doing, to high school, where there's no one on you." What the founder of KIPP (Levin) learned was that what his students needed, in addition to academic skills, what he called "character strengths"... like optimism and resilience. The trouble was that at that time in America, there was not an established curriculum or method for teaching character.... or even talking about it! Today, Levin's teachers use chants, songs and drills and the students wear T-shirts with the slogan "One School. One Mission. Two Skills. Academics and Character." Upshot: Levin has learned that character traits such as optimism are learnable skills and that these character skills are even more necessary for the under-privileged.
IX. CHARACTER NEEDED EQUALLY BY CHILDREN OF THE WEALTHY. John F Kennedy and Robert F Kennedy once attended Riverdale School in New York City. Tuition in this school, just for prekindergarten, starts at $38,500 per year. It is the kind of school members of the establishment send their kids so they can learn to be members of the establishment. Yet the new headmaster at Riverdale believes the emphasis on tests and IQ "is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human." That missing thing is character. "People who have an easy time of things, who get eight hundreds on their SATs, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they're doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure." For underprivileged KIPP kids, the notion that character can help them get through college is a powerful lure, but for kids at schools like Riverdale, not so much. No Riverdale student ever doubts that he/she is going on to college and inevitable graduation. (`Every generation in my family did it'). So it's harder to get rich kids invested in this idea of character. Riverdale see a lot of "helicopter parents," always hovering around, ready to swoop in to rescue, but not necessarily, to bond.
X. AFFLUENT TEENAGERS OFTEN HAVE MORE PROBLEMS WITH ALCOHOL, DRUGS AND DEPRESSION THAN LOW-INCOME TEENS. Studies show that children of affluent parents exhibit "unexpectedly high rates of emotional problems beginning in junior high school. And this is no accident of demographics. Wealthy parents today are more likely than others to be emotionally distant from their children while at the same time insisting on high levels of achievement, a potentially toxic blend of influences that can create "intense feelings of shame and hopelessness." Some studies have found that affluent teenagers use alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, and harder illegal drugs more than the low-income teens. And because of emotional disconnection, affluent parents tend to be unusually indulgent of their children's bad behavior. Children of affluent parents don't have to put up with a lot of suffering. They don't have a threshold for it and, thus, inadvertently they are shielded from exactly the kind of experiences that can lead to character growth. What kids need more than anything is a little hardship: some challenge, some deprivation that they can overcome, even if just to prove to themselves that they can.
XI. CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. Human personality can be explored along 5 dimensions: agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, and conscientiousness. The most important of these from the standpoint of academic success is conscientiousness, the ability to respond well even in the absence of material incentives. Conscientiousness predicts many outcomes that go far beyond the workplace. People high in conscientiousness get better grades in high school and college; they commit fewer crimes; and they stay married longer. They live longer-- and not just because they smoke and drink less. They have fewer strokes, lower blood pressure, and a lower incidence of Alzheimer's disease. The people in society who value conscientiousness are not intellectuals, and they're not academics, and they're not liberals. They tend to be religious-right conservatives. Until very recently, academic researchers shunned conscientiousness; they preferred to study "openness to experience" because it's "cool" and it's about creativity. Most of the research on conscientiousness was done by consultants to resource managers in large corporations who found that IT was the trait that best predicted workplace success. But though it has no downsides, conscientiousness is not the only measure of human potentiality, nor the only word to encompass the concept.
XII. "GRIT" AND THE 6 OTHER STRENGTHS OF HUMAN PERSONALITY. Grit is roughly defined as "a passionate commitment to a single mission and unswerving dedication to achieve that mission. A simple test (involving self-evaluation) has been developed and it is highly predictive of academic success. Grit is only faintly related to IQ; there are smart gritty people and some dumb gritty people. The educational authorities upon whom the author relies believe grit is the most important for education of the 7 dimensions of human character they have focused upon. Self-control, zest, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity are the others.
XIII. THE CRUCIAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN `WANTING' SOMETHING AND `CHOOSING' IT. When it comes to ambition, there is a crucial difference between volition and motivation. Between wanting to lose weight and choosing to be fit. Decide that you want to become world chess champion, and you will probably fail to put in the necessary hard work. If, however, you choose to become world champion, then you will reveal your choice through your behavior and your determination. Every action says, `This is who I am.' The author spent several years monitoring a woman public school chess coach who has had amazing success teaching NYC underprivileged black kids to become (often) nationally ranked chess players. One such kid gave up everything for more than a year to achieve his goal: no parties, no Facebook, no TV or ESPN. Talking about it later, this young man looked back on those months with not just pride in the result, but also pleasant memories of that monastic process. He contrasted this period of dedication with his previous feeling of being unchallenged, "Wasting his brain." Why not, he was asked, spend the same energy on something worthwhile like becoming a brain surgeon? Or something that will bring one material advantage? He answered in terms of aesthetics. The game of chess "is a celebration of existential freedom, in the sense that we are blessed with the opportunity to create ourselves through our actions. In choosing to play chess, we are celebrating freedom above utility. The same can be said of football, competitive swimming, etc..
XIV. RULES, WILLPOWER, HABIT AND CHARACTER. Rules are not the same as willpower. They are a metacognitive substitute for willpower. By making yourself a rule ("I never eat fried dumplings"), you can sidestep the painful internal conflict between your desire and your willful determination to resist. Rules provide structure, preparing us for encounters with tempting stimuli and redirecting our attention elsewhere. Before long, the rules have become as automatic as the appetites they are deflecting. William James, the American philosopher and psychologist, wrote that the traits we call virtues are no more and no less than simple habits. Habit and character are essentially the same thing. Some kids have good habits and some bad; the trick for schools is to inculcate - in most of them - the good.
XV. GROUP IDENTITY AND "STEREOTYPE THREAT." The human psyche is incredibly complex. Psychologists have demonstrated that group identity can have a powerful effect on achievement-- both a positive and a negative one. For example, poor disadvantaged kids going to KIPP charter schools are encouraged to play on the in-group/ out-group thing: `We know what SLANTing is and you don't know what SLANTing is, because you don't go to KIPP.' When white students at Princeton were told before trying a ten-hole mini golf course that it was a test of natural ability in sports (which they feared they didn't possess), they scored four strokes worse than a similar group of white students who were told it was a test of their ability to think strategically. For black students, the effect was the opposite: when they were told the mini golf course was a test of their strategic intelligence, their scores were four strokes worse. Before a challenging math test, female college students need only be reminded that they are female for them to do worse on the test than female students who don't receive that identity cue. The good news about stereotype threat is that, just as it can be triggered by subtle cues, it can be defused by subtle interventions.
XVI. YOUNG ADULTS WITHOUT CHARACTER SKILLS DON'T HAVE MUCH ....BECAUSE CHARACTER IS WHAT KEEPS PEOPLE HAPPY AND SUCCESSFUL AND FULFILLED. Chess or athletics or an "A" in calculus, anything that one choses to accomplish, it doesn't matter. Per the author: "I think the worst thing is you look back on your childhood and it's one blur of sitting in class and being bored and coming home and watching TV." This is the all too common result for too many American children. In positive psychology "optimal experiences" are those rare moments in human existence when a person feels free of mundane distractions, in control of his fate, totally engaged by the moment. A word to describe this is flow. Flow moments occur "when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult or worthwhile." "There's joyousness to it. That's when you're happiest or that's when you're most you or that's when you feel your best. It's easy for naysayers - looking from the outside in - to deride your accomplishment; but for the child who has achieved, there's nothing else they'd rather do.
XVII. CONCLUSION: WE NEED TO IMPROVE POOR CHILDREN'S ACADEMIC SKILLS AND OUTCOMES. Academic grades in school are very good predictors of all kinds of outcomes in life: not just how far you'll go in school and how much you'll earn when you get out, but also whether you'll commit crimes, whether you'll take drugs, whether you'll get married, and whether you'll get divorced. What The Bell Curve showed was that kids who do well in school tend to do well in life, whether or not they come from poverty. If we can help poor children improve their academic skills and academic outcomes, they can escape the cycle of poverty by virtue of their own abilities and without additional handouts or set-asides. But....according to a consensus of reform advocates, the challenge is that there are far too many underperforming teachers, especially in high-poverty schools.
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How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character
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