Learn Forever - With Gratitude to Angela Duckworth

It is now over 50 years since I began teaching. I started by teaching English in a small, rural boarding school in Devon. Many students were the sons of farmers, one of whom began an attempt to write in the style of A.E. Houseman’s ‘Shropshire Lad’ with the immortal words, ‘Tractor, Trailer, Dung-spreader, Baler’, and none of whom was inclined to favor ‘Hamlet’ or poetry over ‘Farmers’ Weekly’. 

When time came at the end of each school year to choose prize-winners, the categories were the traditional collection; English, Mathematics, History, Latin, Chemistry, etc. Except for one. One that was a great source of amusement, jocularity, and rural sound effects as we sat around the staff room trying to select the winner of the ‘Grit and Perseverance Award’. Such a thing had no place, surely, at any self-respecting public school, however minor. How we all, later, now on stage, in full academic dress, stifled our laughter as, year after year, a ruddy-face, hefty student of swaying gait, and bursting from his unadorned blazer, lurched up to receive the gleaming silver trophy from the apprehensive, gloved hands of the honoured guest’s wife. 

How immature we were; how pathetic and juvenile, how unworthy of our profession and, yes, how wrong in every possible way. 

Angela Duckworth has now put us right.

Ms. Duckworth, having spent time in Management Consulting and wishing to do something more useful, became a Grade 7 math teacher in New York City schools. There, she discovered that students with the highest IQ’s were often outperformed. By whom? By students who stuck at their tasks longer, persevering until successful - in short, the ones with grit. 

Clearly a restless soul in the pursuit of certainty, Ms. Duckworth stopped teaching and began to study psychology at UPenn. Having discovered that grit was the element that led to success in other milieus, such as West Point Military Academy, she, now a professor at UPenn, has turned her attention to discovering how to ‘grow’ this quality in children. Her book, ‘Grit’ and her ‘Character Lab’, are worth the attention of every teacher and parent. 

And me? I am more ashamed than ever of my infantile attitude in my early teaching years, in awe of whoever it was who understood the value of grit and instituted the prize, and glad that where the experience of over 50 years in teaching has led me, is now validated by research.