"Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm" -Churchill.
I'm an educator. There's a new approach to schooling beginning to gain momentum that emphasizes Five Essential Skills: Persistence, Resilience, Patience, Courage, and Grit. The theory is we need to focus less on results and test scores, and focus more on process by teaching and developing these skills within students in order for them to grow up and become contributing members of society. Too often children think the "smartest" kids in class are simply born that way, whereas most often the most successful students have learned to embrace and harness some combination of the aforementioned five essential skills. As educators, it's imperative we teach our students that success in school and in life is not an entitlement. It's not a right. It's not owed to them. It's something we all have to work for, and it's not always fun. To be successful requires a certain degree of persistence, resilience, patience, courage, and grit. We have to teach students to suffer better.
Paul Tough does a fabulous job of explaining this approach to education in his book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character.
These same principles can be applied toward becoming a better runner:
Persistence - the more you run the better you become at it
Resilience - intervals hurt, long tempo runs hurt, hill repeats hurt; but they make us better runners
Patience - we don't become better runners over night, but eventually our bodies adapt, our heart's stroke volume increases, our muscles and lungs increase their ability to take up oxygen, and our bones grow stronger and denser
Courage - it takes courage to set goals (especially when made public) and chase after them
Grit - cold and windy winter runs, scorching hot summer runs, rain coming at you sideways,
the last 10km of a marathon, the second to last interval of any session, etc.
These principles also apply to parenting:
Persistence - no you cannot have another cookie, yes you have to brush your teeth, no you
cannot eat that piece of gum off the ground, yes you have to buckle your seatbelt, POTTY TRAINING!
Resilience - getting out the door in the morning, sleep training, road trips
Patience - see above, also...please tidy up, I'm going to count to five
Courage - letting your children learn things for themselves, walk home alone for the first time, having another child
Grit - waking up every two hours for months on end, getting less than four hours of disrupted
sleep night after night and not only thinking I'm good, but training for a marathon on top of it
Being a parent is ALL ABOUT learning to suffer better.
Good start to the blog - you raise some interesting points. As far as education goes, the challenge that comes with embracing character ed is that the curriculum gets more and more dense every year, meaning something has got to give. I am a big believer in character ed and at the expense of the curriculum if needs be, but I don't know that I am the norm.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a question that could be a future topic of discussion - in his book 'The Thrive Diet', Brendan Brazier suggests that willpower is finite. Agree or disagree?
Peace,
Br.