Casual Friday: Why Aren’t Our Schools Teaching Character and Grit?
Most American schools focus on academic curriculum and preparing students for a collegiate career, so much so that upper-tier schools are often colloquially called prep schools. And it’s not a bad goal. But should it be the only goal?
While excelling in academia is important – American standardized test scores are, after all, falling to historically low rates – they’re certainly not the only measure of preparedness or success in the real world. Far from it.
Last week on Rock Center with Brian Williams, a segment really got my attention. It was about a program operating two schools – one lower-income, the other decidely upper-crust – whose specific curriculum teaches kids grit and character. Running alongside the standard academic programming, the idea was to teach character lessons to kids – lessons that a lot of us would call life lessons.
And maybe I’m alone here, but what this program is aiming to teach is something that’s missing from a lot of today’s education and parenting. Life isn’t one-dimensional, so I’m not sure why teaching kids along a single axis is the best we can do.
Here’s the Rock Center clip. Please endure the mandatory ad in the beginning.
The notable thing about the problem this teaching tries to address is that it spans socioeconomic divides. A lack of grit is a self-defined problem; its symptoms are the same regardless of what paths lead to them. Sure, environmental factors shape and mold the kids differently, but when individuals enter a character vaccum, the end result is the same: an unwillingness to persevere in the face of difficulty and an inability to get up after failure.
As a parent, I see both of these everywhere, even among 8 year olds. Kids are so often praised for being ‘smart’ and ‘talented’ that when they fail, they think, “How can this happen? I’m smart and talented. Why am I having difficulty?” These kids, afraid to demonstrate that maybe they aren’t as preternaturally smart and talented as their families would have them believe, fold when met with adversity. It’s easier to shut the machine down that work for something they have been taught to believe comes naturally.
Because the key ingredient isn’t smarts or talent. It’s work and a determination not to quit.
And candidly, speaking of failure: everyone should fail. Everyone needs to fail. Without failure, we don’t know what works. We don’t know what we need to correct. We don’t know how to learn from mistakes, because we’re not making mistakes. Unless the goal is living an error-free life – and if that’s the case, you probably have a pet unicorn, too – we need to let kids fail. We need them to learn how to pick themselves up, clench their jaw, and keep trying until they figure it out. Because the real world doesn’t care how talented Mom and Dad says you are, but it certainly cares how hard you’ll work and your willingness to lean into discomfort to get a job done.
And it’s not just kids: this is about ourselves, spouses, employees, bosses. It’s humans, period.
I’ve never been motivated to send a TV news segment around until I saw this, at which point I promptly forwarded it to my son’s teacher and principal. And still not feeling satisfied, I banged out this 560 word screed.
Because this is important. For everyone.
Think about it.
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