What is Grit and can it be used in schools?
On the day that the Chair of the Independent School's Council has stated that the best GCSE grades do not go to merely the brightest, they go to the ones t hat work the hardest , is there a better time to look at the idea of grit, perseverance and resilience? I am currently reading Angela Duckworth's book entitled 'grit'. She is a former teacher, turned consultant, turned psychologist. In the book, she explains her fascination with the idea that hard work, passion and perseverance are more important that just 'talent' alone. Duckworth states that we, as humans, have a fascination with 'talent' yet often fail to see hard work and perseverance as a talent in itself. Barnaby Lenon today says that pupils that work for 7 hours per day should see a real improvement in exam results on the back of the productive work that they put in over the next 2 and a half weeks. I usually suggest 6 hours for pupils broken into two hour chunks but this still follows ...