Grit is Sh!t – It’s Just an Excuse to do Nothing for Struggling Students

gadflyonthewallblog

 

Let’s say you’re out in public and you see a crying child alone in the street.

What would you do?

Would you run up to her and help? Or would you just shrug, mutter some derisive comment about the brat and walk on?

Our public school policymakers want us to do the later. In fact, they have a whole pedagogical justification for ignoring the needs of children.

It’s called “academic tenacity,” a “growth mindset” or “grit.”

And it goes something like this:

That child isn’t learning? If she just worked harder, she would.

It’s the political equivalent of “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” applied to the classroom.

And it’s super helpful for politicians reluctant to allocate tax dollars to actually help kids succeed.

The idea and the euphemisms used to describe it were coined by Carol Dweck as early as 1999. It was subsequently popularized by seventh-grade…

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