How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character

by Paul Tough

But in the past decade, and especially in the past few years, a disparate congregation of economists, educators, psychologists, and neuroscientists have begun to produce evidence that calls into question many of the assumptions behind the cognitive hypothesis. What matters most in a child’s development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence. Economists refer to these as noncognitive skills, psychologists call them personality traits, and the rest of us sometimes think of them as character.

We can’t get better at overcoming disappointment just by working harder at it for more hours. And children don’t lag behind in curiosity simply because they didn’t start doing curiosity drills at an early enough age.

How do our experiences in childhood make us the adults we become?

In the early twentieth century, the Austrian philosopher Sir Karl Popper wrote that the nature of scientific thought was such that one could never truly verify scientific theories; the only way to test the validity of any particular theory was to prove it wrong, a process he labeled falsification. This idea made its way into cognitive science with the observation that most people are actually quite bad at falsification—not just in science but in daily life. When testing a theory, however large or small, an individual doesn’t instinctively look for evidence that contradicts it; he looks for data that prove him right, a tendency known as confirmation bias.

Not long ago, the United States led the world in producing college graduates; now it leads the world in producing college dropouts.

Put Duckworth’s findings together with the discoveries in Crossing the Finish Line, and you reach a rather remarkable conclusion: whether or not a student is able to graduate from a decent American college doesn’t necessarily have all that much to do with how smart he or she is. It has to do, instead, with that same list of character strengths that produce high GPAs in middle school and high school.

Why grades matter.

Nelson’s belief is that underperforming high-school students can relatively quickly transform themselves into highly successful college students—but that it is almost impossible for them to make that transition without the help of a highly effective teacher.

The impact of a highly effective teacher

When I spoke with Angela Duckworth about the OneGoal program, she pointed out something I hadn’t thought of: that the ACT-prep component of the OneGoal curriculum might actually be serving two purposes. First, on a practical level, improving their scores by a few points would give students access to more and higher-quality colleges. But second, and perhaps more important, the experience of improving one’s outcome on a test that ostensibly measures intelligence serves as an unforgettable reinforcement of the growth-mindset message: You can get smarter. You can do better.

The growth mindset "You can do better"

Kewauna’s grades actually improved in her second semester, and at the end of her freshman year, her cumulative GPA stood at 3.8. There were still three years to go, lots of time for things to go wrong, for setbacks and mistakes and crises. But Kewauna seemed certain of where she was heading and why—almost unnervingly so. What was most remarkable to me about Kewauna was that she was able to marshal her prodigious noncognitive capacity—call it grit, conscientiousness, resilience, or the ability to delay gratification—all for a distant prize that was, for her, almost entirely theoretical. She didn’t actually know any business ladies with briefcases downtown; she didn’t even know any college graduates except her teachers. It was as if Kewauna were taking part in an extended, high-stakes version of Walter Mischel’s marshmallow experiment, except in this case, the choice on offer was that she could have one marshmallow now or she could work really hard for four years, constantly scrimping and saving, staying up all night, struggling, sacrificing—and then get, not two marshmallows, but some kind of elegant French pastry she’d only vaguely heard of, like a Napoleon. And Kewauna, miraculously, opted for the Napoleon, even though she’d never tasted one before and didn’t know anyone who had. She just had faith that it was going to be delicious.

I worry though, what about the students and who do all this and don't get even the marshmallow. I worry though, what about the students and there are a lot of them who do all this and don't get even the marshmallow. They make it through but still can't engage in the world and find jobs, economic success, and most importantly joy!

But to me, the most profound discovery this new generation of neuroscientists has made is the powerful connection between infant brain chemistry and adult psychology. Lying deep beneath those noble, complex human qualities we call character, these scientists have found, is the mundane, mechanical interaction of specific chemicals in the brains and bodies of developing infants. Chemistry is not destiny, certainly. But these scientists have demonstrated that the most reliable way to produce an adult who is brave and curious and kind and prudent is to ensure that when he is an infant, his hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functions well. And how do you do that? It is not magic. First, as much as possible, you protect him from serious trauma and chronic stress; then, even more important, you provide him with a secure, nurturing relationship with at least one parent and ideally two. That’s not the whole secret of success, but it is a big, big part of it.

Why parenting matters!

But now it seemed that if we could make public schools more effective—much more effective—the schools could become a more powerful antipoverty tool than anything we had previously tried.

What a powerful idea!

The consensus of most reform advocates is that there are far too many underperforming teachers, especially in high-poverty schools, and the only way to improve outcomes for students in these schools is to change the way teachers are hired, trained, compensated, and fired.

Thoughts? #edchat