1
00:00:00,880 --> 00:00:02,930
When I was 27 years old,

2
00:00:02,954 --> 00:00:06,277
I left a very demanding job
in management consulting

3
00:00:06,301 --> 00:00:10,058
for a job that was even more
demanding: teaching.

4
00:00:11,298 --> 00:00:13,778
I went to teach seventh graders math

5
00:00:13,802 --> 00:00:15,702
in the New York City public schools.

6
00:00:16,202 --> 00:00:19,083
And like any teacher,
I made quizzes and tests.

7
00:00:19,107 --> 00:00:21,083
I gave out homework assignments.

8
00:00:21,107 --> 00:00:23,829
When the work came back,
I calculated grades.

9
00:00:24,758 --> 00:00:29,310
What struck me was that IQ
was not the only difference

10
00:00:29,334 --> 00:00:32,470
between my best and my worst students.

11
00:00:33,017 --> 00:00:37,784
Some of my strongest performers
did not have stratospheric IQ scores.

12
00:00:38,345 --> 00:00:41,583
Some of my smartest kids
weren't doing so well.

13
00:00:42,297 --> 00:00:43,694
And that got me thinking.

14
00:00:44,432 --> 00:00:47,392
The kinds of things you need
to learn in seventh grade math,

15
00:00:47,416 --> 00:00:52,318
sure, they're hard: ratios, decimals,
the area of a parallelogram.

16
00:00:52,668 --> 00:00:55,344
But these concepts are not impossible,

17
00:00:55,368 --> 00:00:59,478
and I was firmly convinced
that every one of my students

18
00:00:59,502 --> 00:01:02,082
could learn the material

19
00:01:02,106 --> 00:01:04,169
if they worked hard and long enough.

20
00:01:04,842 --> 00:01:07,304
After several more years of teaching,

21
00:01:07,328 --> 00:01:11,062
I came to the conclusion
that what we need in education

22
00:01:11,086 --> 00:01:14,546
is a much better understanding
of students and learning

23
00:01:14,570 --> 00:01:16,887
from a motivational perspective,

24
00:01:16,911 --> 00:01:19,117
from a psychological perspective.

25
00:01:19,815 --> 00:01:25,308
In education, the one thing
we know how to measure best is IQ.

26
00:01:26,172 --> 00:01:30,024
But what if doing
well in school and in life

27
00:01:30,048 --> 00:01:32,142
depends on much more

28
00:01:32,166 --> 00:01:35,546
than your ability to learn
quickly and easily?

29
00:01:36,371 --> 00:01:38,297
So I left the classroom,

30
00:01:38,321 --> 00:01:41,312
and I went to graduate school
to become a psychologist.

31
00:01:41,877 --> 00:01:44,027
I started studying kids and adults

32
00:01:44,051 --> 00:01:46,884
in all kinds of super
challenging settings,

33
00:01:46,908 --> 00:01:49,336
and in every study my question was,

34
00:01:49,360 --> 00:01:51,606
who is successful here and why?

35
00:01:52,384 --> 00:01:55,977
My research team and I went
to West Point Military Academy.

36
00:01:56,476 --> 00:01:58,136
We tried to predict which cadets

37
00:01:58,160 --> 00:02:01,668
would stay in military training
and which would drop out.

38
00:02:02,414 --> 00:02:04,645
We went to the National Spelling Bee

39
00:02:04,669 --> 00:02:09,208
and tried to predict which children
would advance farthest in competition.

40
00:02:09,867 --> 00:02:13,923
We studied rookie teachers
working in really tough neighborhoods,

41
00:02:13,947 --> 00:02:17,364
asking which teachers are still
going to be here in teaching

42
00:02:17,388 --> 00:02:19,382
by the end of the school year,

43
00:02:19,406 --> 00:02:22,417
and of those, who will be
the most effective

44
00:02:22,441 --> 00:02:25,125
at improving learning
outcomes for their students?

45
00:02:25,592 --> 00:02:27,822
We partnered with private
companies, asking,

46
00:02:27,846 --> 00:02:30,541
which of these salespeople
is going to keep their jobs?

47
00:02:30,565 --> 00:02:32,431
And who's going to earn the most money?

48
00:02:32,797 --> 00:02:35,455
In all those very different contexts,

49
00:02:35,479 --> 00:02:39,980
one characteristic emerged
as a significant predictor of success.

50
00:02:40,464 --> 00:02:42,242
And it wasn't social intelligence.

51
00:02:42,662 --> 00:02:45,647
It wasn't good looks, physical health,

52
00:02:45,671 --> 00:02:46,989
and it wasn't IQ.

53
00:02:47,758 --> 00:02:48,874
It was grit.

54
00:02:49,899 --> 00:02:54,529
Grit is passion and perseverance
for very long-term goals.

55
00:02:54,989 --> 00:02:56,660
Grit is having stamina.

56
00:02:57,232 --> 00:03:01,438
Grit is sticking with your future,
day in, day out,

57
00:03:01,462 --> 00:03:04,827
not just for the week,
not just for the month,

58
00:03:04,851 --> 00:03:06,383
but for years,

59
00:03:06,407 --> 00:03:10,128
and working really hard
to make that future a reality.

60
00:03:10,969 --> 00:03:15,238
Grit is living life
like it's a marathon, not a sprint.

61
00:03:16,156 --> 00:03:17,587
A few years ago,

62
00:03:17,611 --> 00:03:20,625
I started studying grit
in the Chicago public schools.

63
00:03:21,141 --> 00:03:23,429
I asked thousands of high school juniors

64
00:03:23,453 --> 00:03:25,281
to take grit questionnaires,

65
00:03:25,305 --> 00:03:27,257
and then waited around more than a year

66
00:03:27,281 --> 00:03:28,637
to see who would graduate.

67
00:03:29,518 --> 00:03:31,740
Turns out that grittier kids

68
00:03:31,764 --> 00:03:34,944
were significantly more
likely to graduate,

69
00:03:34,968 --> 00:03:38,730
even when I matched them
on every characteristic I could measure,

70
00:03:38,754 --> 00:03:41,004
things like family income,

71
00:03:41,028 --> 00:03:43,750
standardized achievement test scores,

72
00:03:43,774 --> 00:03:46,798
even how safe kids felt
when they were at school.

73
00:03:47,377 --> 00:03:50,314
So it's not just at West Point
or the National Spelling Bee

74
00:03:50,338 --> 00:03:51,452
that grit matters.

75
00:03:51,476 --> 00:03:53,417
It's also in school,

76
00:03:53,441 --> 00:03:55,822
especially for kids
at risk for dropping out.

77
00:03:57,116 --> 00:04:00,074
To me, the most shocking thing about grit

78
00:04:00,098 --> 00:04:02,057
is how little we know,

79
00:04:02,081 --> 00:04:04,583
how little science knows,
about building it.

80
00:04:05,003 --> 00:04:07,254
Every day, parents and teachers ask me,

81
00:04:07,278 --> 00:04:09,478
"How do I build grit in kids?

82
00:04:09,502 --> 00:04:12,419
What do I do to teach kids
a solid work ethic?

83
00:04:12,753 --> 00:04:15,241
How do I keep them motivated
for the long run?"

84
00:04:15,860 --> 00:04:17,835
The honest answer is,

85
00:04:17,859 --> 00:04:18,936
I don't know.

86
00:04:18,960 --> 00:04:20,435
(Laughter)

87
00:04:20,459 --> 00:04:23,498
What I do know is that talent
doesn't make you gritty.

88
00:04:23,522 --> 00:04:25,853
Our data show very clearly

89
00:04:25,877 --> 00:04:28,290
that there are many talented individuals

90
00:04:28,314 --> 00:04:31,433
who simply do not follow through
on their commitments.

91
00:04:31,814 --> 00:04:36,028
In fact, in our data,
grit is usually unrelated

92
00:04:36,052 --> 00:04:39,173
or even inversely related
to measures of talent.

93
00:04:40,465 --> 00:04:44,560
So far, the best idea I've heard
about building grit in kids

94
00:04:44,584 --> 00:04:46,806
is something called "growth mindset."

95
00:04:47,449 --> 00:04:51,119
This is an idea developed
at Stanford University by Carol Dweck,

96
00:04:51,143 --> 00:04:56,241
and it is the belief that the ability
to learn is not fixed,

97
00:04:56,265 --> 00:04:58,732
that it can change with your effort.

98
00:04:59,440 --> 00:05:00,759
Dr. Dweck has shown

99
00:05:00,783 --> 00:05:03,918
that when kids read
and learn about the brain

100
00:05:03,942 --> 00:05:07,416
and how it changes and grows
in response to challenge,

101
00:05:07,440 --> 00:05:11,437
they're much more likely
to persevere when they fail,

102
00:05:11,461 --> 00:05:16,070
because they don't believe that failure
is a permanent condition.

103
00:05:17,052 --> 00:05:20,182
So growth mindset
is a great idea for building grit.

104
00:05:20,724 --> 00:05:22,261
But we need more.

105
00:05:22,825 --> 00:05:24,921
And that's where I'm going
to end my remarks,

106
00:05:24,945 --> 00:05:26,291
because that's where we are.

107
00:05:26,315 --> 00:05:28,480
That's the work that stands before us.

108
00:05:28,504 --> 00:05:32,384
We need to take our best ideas,
our strongest intuitions,

109
00:05:32,408 --> 00:05:34,043
and we need to test them.

110
00:05:34,512 --> 00:05:37,223
We need to measure
whether we've been successful,

111
00:05:37,247 --> 00:05:40,953
and we have to be willing
to fail, to be wrong,

112
00:05:40,977 --> 00:05:43,615
to start over again with lessons learned.

113
00:05:44,336 --> 00:05:47,280
In other words, we need to be gritty

114
00:05:47,304 --> 00:05:49,773
about getting our kids grittier.

115
00:05:50,177 --> 00:05:51,209
Thank you.

116
00:05:51,233 --> 00:05:54,068
(Applause)