When I was 27 years old, I left a very demanding job in management consulting for a job that was even more demanding: teaching. I went to teach seventh graders math in the New York City public schools. And like any teacher, I made quizzes and tests. I gave out homework assignments. When the work came back, I calculated grades.
What struck me was that I.Q. was not the only difference between my best and my worst students. Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric I.Q. scores. Some of my smartest kids weren't doing so well.
And that got me thinking. The kinds of things you need to learn in seventh grade math, sure, they're hard: ratios, decimals, the area of a parallelogram. But these concepts are not impossible, and I was firmly convinced that every one of my students could learn the material if they worked hard and long enough.
After several more years of teaching, I came to the conclusion that what we need in education is a much better understanding of students and learning from a motivational perspective, from a psychological perspective. In education, the one thing we know how to measure best is I.Q., but what if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily?
So I left the classroom, and I went to graduate school to become a psychologist. I started studying kids and adults in all kinds of super challenging settings, and in every study my question was, who is successful here and why? My research team and I went to West Point Military Academy. We tried to predict which cadets would stay in military training and which would drop out. We went to the National Spelling Bee and tried to predict which children would advance farthest in competition. We studied rookie teachers working in really tough neighborhoods, asking which teachers are still going to be here in teaching by the end of the school year, and of those, who will be the most effective at improving learning outcomes for their students? We partnered with private companies, asking, which of these salespeople is going to keep their jobs? And who's going to earn the most money? In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't I.Q. It was grit.
Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.
A few years ago, I started studying grit in the Chicago public schools. I asked thousands of high school juniors to take grit questionnaires, and then waited around more than a year to see who would graduate. Turns out that grittier kids were significantly more likely to graduate, even when I matched them on every characteristic I could measure, things like family income, standardized achievement test scores, even how safe kids felt when they were at school. So it's not just at West Point or the National Spelling Bee that grit matters. It's also in school, especially for kids at risk for dropping out. To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it. Every day, parents and teachers ask me, "How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?" The honest answer is, I don't know. (Laughter) What I do know is that talent doesn't make you gritty. Our data show very clearly that there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through on their commitments. In fact, in our data, grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measures of talent.
So far, the best idea I've heard about building grit in kids is something called "growth mindset." This is an idea developed at Stanford University by Carol Dweck, and it is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can change with your effort. Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to persevere when they fail, because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition.
So growth mindset is a great idea for building grit. But we need more. And that's where I'm going to end my remarks, because that's where we are. That's the work that stands before us. We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to measure whether we've been successful, and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned.
In other words, we need to be gritty about getting our kids grittier.
Thank you.
在我27歲的時候， 我辭去了一份非常有挑戰性的職業—企業管理諮詢， 轉而投入了一份更加具有挑戰性的職業：教育。 我來到紐約的一些公立學校 教7年級的學生的數學。 和別的老師一樣，我會給學生們做小測驗和考試， 我會給他們布置家庭作業。 當這些試卷和作業收上來之後，我計算了他們的成績。
讓我震驚的是，IQ的高低並不是 我最好的和最差的學生之間唯一的差別。 一些在課業上表現很好的學生 並不具有非常高的IQ分數。 一些非常聰明的孩子反而在課業上表現的不那麼盡如人意。
這引起了我的思考。 當然，學生們在7年級需要學習的東西 是有難度的，像比率，小數， 平行四邊形的面積計算。 但是這些概念是完全可以被掌握的， 我堅信我的每一位學生 都可以學會教材內容， 只要他們肯花時間和精力的話。
經過幾年教學之後， 我得出一個結論，我們在教育方面所需要的是 從學習動力的角度和心理學的角度， 對學生和學習行為 進行一次更為深刻的理解。 在教育體系中，我們都知道評價優秀學生的標準 就是IQ，但如果在學校和生活中的優秀表現 遠不僅僅依賴於 你輕鬆高效學習的能力呢？
所有我離開了講臺， 回到學校繼續攻讀心理學碩士學位。 我開始研究孩子和大人， 在各種非常具有挑戰性的情況下， 以及在各項研究中，我的問題是 誰才是成功者，為什麼他們會成功？ 我和我的研究團隊前往西點軍校展開調研， 我們試圖預測哪些學員 能夠耐得住軍隊的訓練，哪些會被淘汰出局。 我們前去觀摩全國拼字比賽， 同時也試著預測哪些孩子會晉級到最後的比賽。 我們研究在惡劣的工作環境下工作的， 剛入行的老師，詢問他們 哪些老師決定會在學年結束後 繼續留下來任教， 以及他們之中誰能最快地 提高學生的學習成績。 我們與私企合作，向他們詢問 哪些銷售人員可以保住工作， 哪些可以賺錢最多？ 在所有那些不同的情境下， 一種性格特徵凸顯了出來， 這種特徵在很大程度上預示了成功。 而且它並不是社交智力。 不是漂亮的外表，強健的體魄，也不是很高的IQ， 它是毅力。
毅力是對長遠目標的激情和堅持， 毅力是擁有持久的恆勁， 毅力是你對未來的堅持，日復一日 不是僅僅持續一個星期或者一個月， 而是幾年甚至幾十年努力奮鬥著 讓自己的夢想變為現實。 毅力是把生活當成一場馬拉松而不是一次短跑。
幾年前，在芝加哥的公立學校裡， 我開始研究毅力。 我對上千名初中生進行了 關於毅力的問卷調查， 然後等候了一年多， 來看最終哪些學生能畢業。 結果證明那些更具毅力的學生在畢業的概率上佔絕對優勢， 即使是在同樣可以量化的外在因素下 像家庭收入， 標準化成績測驗的分數， 甚至是孩子們在學校能獲得多少安全感之類，仍是有毅力的學生更容易畢業所有不僅僅是在西點軍校裡或者全國拼字比賽上 才需要毅力。在學校亦是如此， 尤其是對於那些徘徊在輟學邊緣的孩子們。 對於我自己來說，關於毅力最讓我震驚的事情莫過於 對於毅力，我們知之甚少， 在培養毅力上，科學對理解的認識又是何等貧乏。 每天都有家長和老師來問我， 「我怎樣做才能培養孩子的毅力呢? 該做些什麼才能教授給孩子們真正的職業道德？又該怎樣調動他們長期的積極性呢？」 老實說，我不知道。（笑聲） 我所知道的是，才華並不能使你堅韌不拔。 我們的數據十分清楚地表明， 有許多才華橫溢的人， 他們都無法堅持兌現自己的承諾。 事實上，根據我們的數據來看，毅力通常與其他因素無關， 甚至與才華的衡量標準背道而馳。
到目前為止，我所聽說過的在孩子身上培養堅韌品質最有效的方法 叫「成長型思維模式。」 史丹福大學卡洛杜威克提出過一個觀點， 他相信 人的學習能力是可變的， 它隨著你的努力程度而變化。 杜威克教授表示，當孩子們閱讀和學習有關大腦的知識 以及它在面對挑戰時 所發生的變化和成長情況， 他們失敗之後更容易堅持下去， 因為他們 不相信會一直失敗下去。
因此，成長性思維模式對培養毅力大有裨益。 但是我們需要更多。 我決定在此結束我的評論， 因為我們正在經歷著這一切。 這是眼前所面臨的工作。 我們要拿出最好的想法和最強的直覺， 我們要對他們進行實踐。 我們需要估量這一切是否成功 同時還要渴望對失敗和錯誤， 要從這些失敗中汲取經驗重新再來。
換句話說，我們只有自己變得更有毅力 才能讓我們的孩子變得更有毅力。
謝謝大家！