The problem with Grit.

Radical Mothering No. 28

I recently finished Angela Duckworth’s book, Grit: the power of passion and perseverance, and I have so many thoughts!

I’m going to try to write some of them down.

I was at a dinner some time ago and we were talking about schools and education, and someone mentioned how important teaching grit was. It stuck with me, because I feel like this is just the same conversation that happens over again: what we’re teaching isn’t working, we should teach this other thing!

No talk of actually questioning the entire premise of the teacher-student relationship, of classrooms, of curricula, of adult-imposed content. Or of the fact that the sharing of knowledge doesn’t have to be a one-way street, from teacher to student.

But anyway, I digress.

So off I went to read the whole book (actually I listened to it), because I wanted to be prepared next time someone mentioned grit. Because there was something a little off about it, intuitively, but I wasn’t sure why.

Grit, as defined by Duckworth, who is a research psychologist, is a combination of passion and perseverance. She has devised a Grit Scale to measure people’s grit, and has done a bunch of research and interviews on how grit correlates with success in the workplace and/or in life.

I won’t touch upon all the points she makes and all the issues there might be - because it’s a lot.

But I want to talk about how grit is considered to be one of the most important elements in future “success.”

My very first reaction to this entire premise is that putting the onus on the individual is a very American way of seeing things (and perhaps a very capitalist way too). Essentially, if we assume that grit can be taught (and Duckworth claims that to some extent, it can), then we could teach everyone grit and everyone would then be able to fully own their future successes and failures. To find their passions, to persevere at them over the long-term, and to find success in their chosen field.

Grit essentially points to individual people’s success being the direct result of their individual ability to find something they love to do, and persevere at it over a significant period of time. She does acknowledge that support systems matter - a good coach, a network of people who believe in you, socio-economic resources, and so on, matter.

What she doesn’t go as far as to acknowledge, is that systemic inequity, the socio-economic differences that disproportionately affect marginalized groups, is one of the biggest predictors of children’s “outcomes”, of children’s future success. She also doesn’t acknowledge other barriers to positive outcomes that are embedded in our systems, and that affect people who are marginalized in all sorts of ways - people color, women (especially those of color), disabled people, neurodivergent people, LGBTQ+ people, and so on.

Before I go on, I want to say that I found a lot of what I read interesting and helpful, and possibly applicable to my own life. Duckworth speaks to the primacy of perseverance over talent, of putting in regular, deliberate practice, of working on a growth mindset. All of these things matter! All of these things are worth knowing about, and maybe worth talking to our children about, or modeling for them. I especially found that her findings about practice being more important than raw talent, can help to inspire children and adults alike.

I don’t think that her ideas can be spoken about in isolation, however.

The grit playing field is not equal, and we can’t expect that teaching grit to underprivileged children will solve much larger societal issues such as poverty, unemployment and lack of housing. We can’t expect to put all the responsibility for “success” on children themselves, and ignore the bigger issues and structures at play. That will simply reinforce existing inequality: children who grow up in privilege will believe that grit was why they succeeded (btw the Grit Scale is a self-evaluation, which obviously has downsides), and children who grew up under very difficult circumstances will believe that lack of grit is what they aren’t succeeding.

Grit might become yet another thing children can fail at, and yet another way we adults have found to measure, control and micro-manage our children’s lives. And I have serious doubts that children even need to know about grit at all - from my work with children, I’ve noticed that when a child is passionate about something, or finds a purpose for something, they will persevere.

And it makes no sense to construct a school system that is based on external validation (rewards and praise), then expect children to operate on intrinsic motivation (the kind that more often displays grit), and when they don’t, essentially tell them they need to work on their grit.

The teaching of grit in schools is ironic because perhaps if schools offered a more interest-led curriculum, a curriculum that mattered, methods that felt respectful, and true partnership with children, then young people would exhibit passion and perseverance - like perhaps they wouldn’t need to be taught it. This is never touched upon in the books. It’s all like, “we must train our children to have grit” and not “let’s trust them to develop it through interests and partnership”.

The explicit teaching of grit feels a bit like offering a child food they dislike (the school curriculum), then explaining why eating that food is a skill they need to practice (grit), and that by practicing it they might at some point be able to transfer that skill to a food they actually like. Or they might even grow to love the undesirable food!

How about just providing enjoyable food??

In her book, Bettina Love critiques the teaching of grit to Black children. She writes, “We have rebelled, fought, conformed, pleaded with the courts, marched, protested, boycotted, created timeless art that reflects our lives, and become president of the country that disposes of us with little to no relief of our oppression. Is this not grit?”

The brutal irony is that the education system wants to teach grit to marginalized and underprivileged kids, who are often some of the grittiest kids because of the tough environments they live in and the hurdles they overcome. But because we measure success as academic achievement and a successful career, the kids who end up being applauded for having grit, are inevitably the most privileged. The ones more likely to access what is considered “success” in mainstream society.

So that leads us to believe that what children need, and what we need to teach them to succeed, is grit. When in fact what they need is an end to systemic inequities, anti-racism, anti-discriminatory practices, acceptance, love, belonging.

Bettina Love writes, “Measuring dark students’ grit while removing no institutional barriers is education’s version of The Hunger Games. It is adults overseeing which dark children can beat the odds, odds put in place and maintained by an oppressive system.” She continues, “Dark students being gritty, full of excitement and energy, reciting self-improvement statements, and displaying social and emotional intelligence does not stop them from being killed in the streets or spirit-murdered in the classroom.”

From my perspective, grit could be seen as an extremely neuro-normative standard, that doesn’t take into account the differences and variations in human brains and expects success to happen in the same way for everyone (not to mention, it expects success to LOOK the same too).

A further issue with grit, and the way it has been incorporated into the school system, is that it is one element of the more general idea of “character education”. In brief, character education is a way US schools and education have for decades tried to mould the national character of all people, but especially marginalized groups and non-white groups, to essentially conform to White norms of what “good character” looks like. I’m not going to go deeper into this here, but suffice it to say that the focus on grit and zest and character-building is a legacy of 1960s positive psychology and the belief that the aim of education was to build the character of future citizens.

And lastly, Duckworth never speaks to the why of grit. Like, you could be gritty and work hard to exploit people, extract resources and selfishly pursue your own interests, and that would be just as valid as someone who is gritty in the pursuit of a common good, in the making of beautiful art, in the spreading of kindness and courage. In other words, you can be a “gritty colonizer” or a “gritty criminal” and that is still grit. O-kay.

Sometimes grit can be co-opted by the wrong people. And I think we need to be conscious of that. Grit does not exist alone - if we’re going to be talking to our children about grit then we should also be talking about the WHY of grit. Why are we working hard and persevering at something we love? How will it benefit others (rather than just like, capitalism)? How will it provide meaning for others? How is it bigger than ourselves? And in what ways is it asking us to change who we are? To compromise our authenticity? To blame ourselves when we fail?

So many questions.

We don’t exist in an individualistic vaccuum. And I think that is ultimately the problem with pretending that grit can be practiced and taught as if we do.