The above is Angela Lee Duckworth's speech at Ted. She won MacArthur's "Genius Award" for letting people understand the importance of self-discipline and perseverance for academic achievement. The following is the text version.
I find that the difference between my best and worst students is not just IQ. Some very good students do not have very high IQ; some very smart students do not have very good academic performance.
This triggered my thinking. What seventh grade mathematics needs to learn is really difficult: proportion, decimal, area of parallelogram. But these concepts are not incomprehensible, and I firmly believe that every student of mine can learn these knowledge as long as they are serious enough and persevere in working hard.
After several years of teaching, I come to a conclusion: what we need in our education is a better understanding of students and learning - from the perspective of motivation and psychology. In the field of education, our best indicator is IQ, but if you are good at school and in life, it is not only depends on whether you can learn well and quickly?
So, I left the classroom, went to the Institute, and became a psychologist. I began to study the performance of children and adults in a variety of difficult challenges. In each study, I focused on: who will succeed? Why is it successful? My research team and I went to west point.
We try to predict which students will pass the military training and which will give up. Let's go to the national spelling bee and try to predict which children will laugh at the end of the competition.
We study new teachers who work in very difficult environments, and predict which teachers will stick to their posts at the end of the school year. Of course, which teachers teach the most significant improvement in student performance?
We work with private companies to predict which salespeople will keep their jobs? Who makes the most money? In these very different contexts, we find that there is a trait that can predict success very well. It's not social ability, it's not beautiful appearance, it's not healthy body, it's not intelligence, it's willpower.
Willpower is the passion and perseverance in the face of long-term goals; willpower is the expression of endurance; willpower is the belief in the future day by day, not just this week, not this month, but year after year, work hard, to achieve the future that you firmly believe in; willpower is to see life as a marathon, not a sprint.
A few years ago, I started studying willpower in Chicago public schools. I asked thousands of high school students to fill out questionnaires about willpower, and then waited for about a year to see who would graduate. The results showed that the more determined the children were, the more likely they were to graduate. All other possible factors were considered and excluded, such as family income, standardized test scores, and even children's sense of security in school.
So will power is not only very important in West Point military school or national spelling bee, but also important in school, especially for children who are in danger of dropping out of school. What surprises me most about willpower is that we and the scientific community know very little about how to exercise it. Every day, parents and teachers ask me, "how to exercise children's willpower? How can I teach my children solid professional ethics? How can they be motivated in the long run? " The honest answer is, I don't know.
What I know is that being talented doesn't mean having willpower. Our data clearly shows that there are many talented people who can't stick to their promises. In fact, our research finds that willpower is usually irrelevant to talent, sometimes even inversely proportional.
The best way I've heard so far to exercise children's will is called the theory of "growth mode of thinking", which is the research result of Carol Dweck of Stanford University. This theory believes that the ability to learn is not immutable, it will change because of your efforts. Dr Dweck has shown that when children read and learn about the brain, and understand how it changes and grows in the face of challenges, they are more likely to stick with failure because they don't believe they will always fail.
Therefore, the growth mode of thinking is a good way to exercise willpower. But we need more of that. And that's the end of my speech today, because that's what we know right now. This is the task before us. We need to test them with our best ideas and intuition. We need to measure whether we are successful or not. We have to be willing to fail, to make mistakes, to learn and to start from scratch.
In other words, in the matter of strengthening our children's willpower, we should also have unremitting will ourselves.
In addition to "growth mode of thinking", you can also try several effective methods:
1. Give yourself the opportunity to face challenges
Experiencing adventure and obstacles is an important way to learn. You can challenge a very difficult thing. It's better to have strict discipline and rules, which need long-term practice. For example, piano and ballet. It doesn't matter how you do it. It's important to try your best. In the process, you may be anxious, but when you overcome obstacles, you will find the motivation to persist.
2. Don't give up when you feel bad
Many people think that what we are good at or not good at is due to talent. If you adhere to this concept, it may lead to the habit of giving up easily. Don't end up feeling bad. Just give up when you are frustrated. It may mean that you will miss the moment of success. I insist that my two daughters do everything to the end. This kind of exercise makes them realize that they need to overcome some discomfort and obstacles in the learning process, which is very natural.
3. Timely and necessary promotion
This is for teachers and parents. No child is completely spontaneous. When he has problems, push him in time: set a schedule, then encourage him to stick with it and practice again and again. Although he may complain, it does help him to know your expectations and help him to do better.
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