Columns

From the Desk of the School Superintendent: True grit

I’m not talking about the movie “True Grit.” I’m talking about fortitude, resilience and the ability to recover quickly from setbacks. I wrote an article about child and adolescent resilience years ago when I was an elementary school principal. Frank A. Clark postulates, “If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably does not lead anywhere.” The September 18 issue of the New York Times Magazine just released an article, “The Character Test — Why our kids’ success — and happiness — may depend less on perfect performance than on learning how to deal with failure.” It was one of the most honest and provocative stories I have read in quite some time. I was more intrigued with the aspect of students needing to be resilient than the author’s reporting on character.

The article begins by describing the Riverdale Country School in the Bronx and its headmaster, Dominic Randolph. Mr. Randolph is “surprisingly skeptical about many of the basic elements of a contemporary high-stakes American education.” He encourages his teachers to limit the homework they assign and believes that if schools judge and evaluate students based on I.Q., schools are “missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.” What he and many other educators are referring to is character, character in the sense of working hard and showing grit.

Mr. Randolph asserts, “Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People have an easy time of things. I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re … [in trouble], to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to handle that.” The article continues on about students needing the ability to learn how to dust themselves off after dealing with setbacks. As one Riverdale teacher is quoted, “Our kids don’t put up with a lot of suffering, and when they do get uncomfortable, we hear from their parents.”

Please do not misunderstand my attempt to bring this subject to light. As a former elementary and middle school principal, and more importantly as a parent, I struggle with balancing my ability (or inability) to not intervene every time I see my students or children struggle. My first instinct is to protect and make them feel secure. As I write this article, I think about my own experiences and how I learned to deal with failure. It’s hard for me to quantify how many times I’ve fallen down; I will say it is too high to count. I truly believe I am a more resourceful and independent adult by building my capacity to recover from setbacks.

I think about the opportunities that surfaced when learning to deal with adversity, to have that “true grit.” If I didn’t get cut from the JV basketball team, I never would have played tennis. I think of the jobs I interviewed for and didn’t get on my first interview, the schools I applied to and didn’t get into, the financial struggles many people are going through right now; by learning how to fail and building grit and self-control, I believe we are on the right track to assisting our children to truly succeed. Confucius once stated, “Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.” Let’s continue to work together in shaping the future of our children.