A Critical Analysis Of Grit By Angela Duckworth

Various psychologists define grit in different various ways. According to Duckworth et al (2007), they define grit as the perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Scientists and researchers while integrating biographical writings of the world famous figures have derived the same conclusions on the individuals who are known to be high achievers in the world and the connections their achievement have to grit.

Angela Lee Duckworth defines grit as “passion and perseverance to pursue long term goals” (Duckworth and Winkler, True Grit). Grit is putting your mind towards a goal and not to give up, no matter what obstacle that stands in front of you. By becoming a gritty individual, a person gains courage within their self. Having courage, people manage fear of failure and being true within oneself to aim for things they would have never thought they could achieve. Grit is to aspire and succeed in ones future goals in college. Grit is to help maintain effort and interest over time, also to stay committed in spite of adversity. In Duckworth’s studies she showed how gritty people are more likely to become successful than talented people. In a study conducted

Duckworth explains people with grit are those who confront failure and don’t give up easily. She did research on the U.S Army to determine their grit. She realize, if the soldiers had a though of mind of grit they showed good results in their military performance on summer camp. Also, there was a fascinating research she had with taxi drivers relating to grit. Commonly, one would think that taxi drivers make more money in a rainy day. But what she found out was that taxi drivers work less hours in rainy days because they would make the sufficient money they needed for the day. In similarity, she compare this research to talent and grit. One with talent will spent less time on something so they stop immediately once they have proficient. In the other hand, someone with grit will spend longer time and get more out of it.

Grit, what is this? Is it success, is it failure, or is it talent? As Angela Duckworth said “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day-in and 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.” Grit is a combination of strength, persistence, focus, and dedication that helps a person to maintain the optimism and discipline needed to persevere in their goals even if they are head to head with failure. Grit does not depend on talent, IQ, or success. Grit is the ability to fail and learn from your mistake, in order to come back next

In the article of The Limits Of “Grit” by David Denby there are plenty of interesting ideas that are brought up. One of the ideas that Denby brings up is teaching grit in schools. Denby thinks the idea of teaching grit should be taught it all schools. One point that Denby brings up is when he says the following “ If we suffer from a grit deficiency in this country, it shows up in our unwillingness to face what is obviously true—that poverty is the real cause of failing schools.” ( Denby,4) Denby explains that poverty is the real reason why some

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.” (TED

Grit is a predictor of academic, professional, and personal success. Grit can be defined as strength of character or the ability to overcome failure and continue to work toward success. People with grit are not always the people with the most natural ability, but their work ethic and ability to overcome obstacles allows them to achieve success. Grit is a very valuable characteristic in almost any venture, as it gives someone an advantage in overcoming the inevitable obstacles they will face. However, grit is much easier adopted when an individual has a growth mindset.

In Chapter 9 of Grit, Angela Duckworth argues that a growth mindset, rather than a fixed mindset, leads to more success. She shows that a growth mindset leads to a more optimistic outlook on failures, which further leads to perseverance and the ability to take on new challenges without giving up. Using additional research, I agree with Duckworth’s claim that a growth mindset makes an individual more successful because a growth mindset transforms obstacles into learning opportunities and fosters hope, which are essential skills to overcoming failures and becoming successful.

Angela developed a short questionnaire called the “Grit Test”. One must answer the short questions and the results show where you stand on the scale of Grit. She found that the Grit score of someone predicts the level of the achievement they can have under difficult or challenging circumstances. She tried this test at the United States Military Academy, where she had the cadets take the short test and found that the ones who had the highest Grit were the ones who were most likely to go the through with the stringent training program they went through called the “Beast Barracks”. Not the ones with the highest IQ’s, the most talent, or even the most athletic. She tried again in the Scripp’s Spelling Bee, and saw that those who were most intelligent but had a low Grit score were most likely to not make it as far as those who had a higher score. She declared that those who had higher Grit were more likely to pass because they studied harder and with determination. In all of those, it seemed that Grit was the factor that made the students stand out when it came to success, once again proving high IQ’s always being better wrong. Logos is a bit short, as many times in other articles, Grit is simply a glossed over idea that has been thought of up before. In other places, such as a physics teacher and his students in a school in Australia, he saw that Grit had little to do with

Have you ever set a long-term goal and were so determined to meet that goal no matter what happened? Angela Duckworth states, “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in and 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”. Sticking with a long-term goal, when you seem to have hit every bump in the road possible means that you contain grit. In class, we discussed how talent is inversely related to grit. Angela Duckworth did a study and made high school students take her grit test. In this test, she realized that the more grit that the student possessed, the higher chance that student would graduate.

Angela Duckworth’s claims on “Grit” being the fundamental trait of success are easily found false by Marcus Crede. This professor at Iowa State University conducted an investigation of Duckworth’s research under a multitude of her studies including her SAT statistics in relation to “Grit” and where she contrived her “genius” idea from. The deceit of Duckworth’s can be clearly seen by any statistics student with her claimed correlation between students with higher SAT scores and those who were perceived as “Gritty” of only .20 (or twenty percent). Her data can be found irrelevant in this case because in the statistics world, such a small percentage would be considered null once tested. Especially since it is based

The idea of grit is to be used to help students improve on goals they’ve made, but in the The Downside of Grit by Alfie Kohn he would argue that somethings are better left alone instead of trying to pursue them and achieving them with little success. Kohn claims that grit can be counterproductive because anyone could be continuing something that doesn’t make them content with the outcome. He also discusses about how people with grit could experience issues with psychological health when you try over and over again and end up with continuous failure. It would be better to find an alternative pathway that would cause less stress, and end with success. Another argument that Kohn has is against the reliability of the research done on grit doesn’t rely on evidence. It

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives many different definitions defining the word “grit”. A definition that caught my attention was “unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger” .It gave me a personal reference as to reaching a goal, you have to be faced with challenges that you’ll need to conquer with grit being included. In Angela Lee Duckworth’s TED Talk, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” she claims that having students being pushed to the max is the only way to see the full extent of grit, and I agree with Duckworth. I was able to demonstrate grit on becoming a better basketball play after not making the team my sophomore year of high school. Ever since I was disappointed in my results of not making the team, I had told myself this wasn’t going to mean I was done playing basketball .I gave myself perseverance in knowing I could make it next year with motivation.

Growing up, children are often told the common phrase, “If at first, you don't succeed try, try, again…” (W.C. Fields). This is used to teach children to never give up, a way to ensure that they can triumph over adversity and grow upon their grit. Although, people usually forget the second part of that quote, “…Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.” (W.C. Fields). The second half of the quote is a full contrast to the first half, this is telling children to give up and just stop trying. Those who give up are often thought of having no grit. Some wonder if grit is necessary for society, to be more specific if grit is something that should be taught in school, I feel that it should not. Students switch interests so often that it is hard for them to stick with the same interests as time passes. When a student is enthused about a subject, I see grit as a way for one to express their interests. When one’s passion is put to the test and it feels like there is no progress or no more enjoyment left in that passion is when true grit is shown. Those who support the idea of grit, like Angela Duckworth, believe that grit is a big factor in how one succeeds.

Angela Duckworth was a seventh-grade teacher in New York Public Schools, and became a psychologist. She is the author of the TED Talk “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance”. The main point of this TED Talk is that having grit is what will help you to succeed in life. She asks herself, who is successful and why, and she concluded that people who succeed in life are those who have grit, which is the passion and perseverance to achieve every long-term goal. She emphasized that talent or social intelligent is not what will lead you to succeed, but the key that will help you to succeed are passion and perseverance. Those who can stick with their future goals for years and work hard to make that future a reality is more likely to succeed. Moreover, she explained in her speech that growth mindset is great for building grit, which based on the TED Talk people who have a growth mindset are those people that do not believe that failure is a permanent condition. In my point of view those people who have growth mindset are more likely to be successful in life.