

I mean, if you are really, really tenacious and dogged about a goal that’s not meaningful to you, and not interesting to you - then that’s just drudgery. “But I think that the passion piece is at least as important. “I think the misunderstanding - or, at least, one of them - is that it’s only the perseverance part that matters,” Duckworth told Science of Us. Grit, as Duckworth has defined it in her research, is a combination of perseverance and passion - it’s just that the former tends to get all the attention, while the latter is overlooked. She would also like to add: It’s missing half the picture. Here’s the thing: Duckworth completely, totally, absolutely agrees with this critique. IQ, on the other hand, accounts for nearly 40%, according to Plomin. Grit, researchers discovered, accounts for only an additional 0.5% of variation in test scores when compared with conscientiousness. students, measured grit against conscientiousness. The study, which included a representative sample of U.K. In a review of Duckworth’s book published by the magazine Quillette (and shared widely on social media over the weekend by educators and psychologists alike), writer Parker Brown references research published earlier this year that seems to poke a few holes in the theory of grit: More importantly, they found that what Duckworth and colleagues defined as grit is hardly distinguishable from conscientiousness, one of the classic Big Five traits in psychology. As a result, too many of the current applications are shallow interpretations that only sort of capture the vague gist of grit, no matter how well-intentioned the educators backing them happen to be.

The existing research on grit is exciting, but it’s too new to apply to educational policy in any meaningful way. (Duckworth has said she was not thrilled with the title assigned to that talk: “The key to success? Grit.”) But the concept has perhaps especially resonated with educators across the country: Earlier this year, school districts in the San Francisco area announced plans to begin testing students on grit and other forms of emotional intelligence other schools have instituted things like Grit Week, in which students set goals for their scores on upcoming standardized tests. A 2007 academic paper lead-authored by Duckworth has been cited 1,157 times, according to Google Scholar, and Duckworth’s six-minute TED Talk from 2013 on the subject has been watched more than 8.4 million times. And so it’s little wonder that grit has taken off. These are alluring ideas, similar to the ones that helped propel Malcolm Gladwell’s so-called “10,000 hour rule” to mainstream popularity. Why Typical Preschool Crafts Are a Total Waste of Time
