165: How grit helps (and how it doesnt)
At the beginning of our stay at a friend\u2019s house in Oregon six weeks ago, my eight-year-old daughter Carys had biked a flat mile on a mountain biking trail; when we got to a very slight incline she made it 20 feet further and then it all fell apart. She whined; she cried; she refused to go on. Later in the day, after we had both calmed down, we discussed the idea of Doing Hard Things, and we ultimately both agreed that we wanted to improve our mountain biking skills this summer.\n\n \n\nShe has done both a beginner and an intermediate level bike camp since then and her skills have dramatically improved! We did the Trail of Refusal the weekend after the beginner camp and she made it all the way around the loop, and the only complaining was because our riding companions weren\u2019t going fast enough! (I\u2019ve also been riding a lot - selling my old bike for a good price enabled the purchase of a new, much lighter one and I\u2019m now significantly faster than I was. I may need a skills camp myself next time we\u2019re in town\u2026)\n\n \n\nProfessor Angela Duckworth discusses Doing Hard Things in her work on grittiness. A few days ago Listener Jamie, who helped me to prepare to talk with Alfie Kohn several years ago and who co-interviewed Dr. Mona Delahooke with me, sent me an article from The Atlantic that had just popped up in her newsfeed called The Case Against Grit and said \u201cYou said the same thing ages ago!\u201d.\n\n \n\nI was pretty sure I did say that, but I decided to check it out. Looking back at something I wrote four years ago has the potential to be pretty scary - my ideas have evolved a lot since then. Does this episode still ring true? Did I miss major issues? I discuss these ideas in a preview to this re-released episode.\n\n \n\nAnd if you:\nWant your child to be gritty enough to succeed at what they set their minds to, but you\u2019ve no idea how to teach this, or even whether you can or should teach it\u2019;\nKnow that an intrinsic love of learning is so important, but don\u2019t know how to help your child to develop it;\nWorry that you can\u2019t effectively support your child\u2019s learning because you aren\u2019t an expert and don\u2019t have a teaching credential\u2026\n\n \n\n\u2026then the FREE You Are Your Child\u2019s Best Teacher masterclass will help. Get notified when doors re-open. Just click the banner below to know more!\n\n \n\n\n\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\nJump to highlights\n\n(03:29) How Grit is intimately connected to White supremacy\n\n(04:31) Characteristics of White supremacy in the concept of Grit\n\n(05:45) Teaching grittiness seems to be about passing along cultural ideas that we might not agree with\n\n(07:55) Raising children with a broad skill set and a self-identified passion are those who have encouraged rather than pushed their children in many interests rather than just one.\n\n(11:03) Invitation to join the Supporting Your Child\u2019s Learning Membership and You Are Your Child\u2019s Best Teacher workshop\n\n(12:20) Understanding what is Grit scale\n\n(15:30) Is grit about perseverance and passion\n\n(17:15) What it takes to be Grit\n\n(22:01) Using effort to overcome potential deficiencies in talent\n\n(25:27) Issues in measuring the Grit scale to students in schools\n\n(27:09) How could we give students from poor backgrounds a better advantage in school\n\n(28:24) Children experience at least two responses to stress\n\n(30:01) Understanding the issues of grit in famously successful people\n\n(32:21) The 7 virtues of grit\n\n(33:42) One of the major purposes of school is to pass on society\u2019s culture and values to the next generation...