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

by Paul Tough

the benefits of single-minded devotion—a case, in fact, that reminded me very much of Angela Duckworth’s definition of grit: self-discipline wedded to a dedicated pursuit of a goal.

one particular mental task that relies as much on psychological strengths as on cognitive ability: a task known as falsification.

the only way to test the validity of any particular theory was to prove it wrong, a process he labeled falsification.

over the past few years, it has become clear that the United States does not so much have a problem of limited and unequal college access; it has a problem of limited and unequal college completion.

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

When the current high-school system was developed, she wrote, the primary goal was to train students not for college but for the workplace, where at the time “critical thinking and problem-solving abilities were not highly valued.”

the traditional American high school was never intended to be a place where students would learn how to think deeply or develop internal motivation or persevere when faced with difficulty—all the skills needed to persist in college. Instead, it was a place where, for the most part, students were rewarded for just showing up and staying awake.

the world changed, and the American high school didn’t.

those first few years are critically important in the development of a child’s brain. But the most significant skills he is acquiring during those years aren’t ones that can be taught with flashcards.

the most profound discovery this new generation of neuroscientists has made is the powerful connection between infant brain chemistry and adult psychology.

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.

They did their LG-ing mostly in one very specific situation: when their pups were stressed out. It was almost as if the dams were trying to teach their pups, through repetition, a valuable skill: how to manage their inflamed stress systems and restore them to a resting state. The equivalent skill for human infants, I think, is being able to calm down after a tantrum or a bad scare,

if there is a human equivalent to high-LG parenting, it involves a lot of comforting and hugging and talking and reassuring.

He also needed discipline, rules, limits; someone to say no. And what he needed more than anything was some child-size adversity, a chance to fall down and get back up on his own, without help.

kids who worked very hard but never had to make a difficult decision or confront a real challenge and so entered the adult world competent but lost.

the biggest obstacles to academic success that poor children, especially very poor children, often face: a home and a community that create high levels of stress, and the absence of a secure relationship with a caregiver that would allow a child to manage that stress.