grit nation
Manila, 31 May—Just like that, we’re already at the end of May. I remember ushering in 2020 and praying that Taal Volcano’s eruption was not an indicator of the year to come.
Oh boy. Here comes June. Taal seems like a forever ago.
Anyway, the end of May usually means we gotta wrap-up summer—so the last week of this month has been usually reserved for last-minute beach getaways, and what-not. There’s none of that this year though—the COVID emergency made sure of that.
But there are other things that come at the end of summer, and among these is the school year.
I’m not a parent, but I am invested in this conversation. Many of my parent-friends are anxious and worried about sending their kids back to school. If I had a kid, I’d be worried too—I’m not entirely convinced that the government is doing well in its COVID response, especially considering that the virus will be here for the long-haul. I don’t have a clear idea of the government’s true capacity to handle a surge of cases involving young children. So far, we have spent two months in lockdown, and the DOH is still clearing backlogs from March. I’m not sure that this government has access to the best data to guide its policy decisions.
Hand-in-hand with this health concern is the Department of Education’s push for blended learning to keep students going despite COVID. In the absence of face-to-face classes, DepEd is pushing for alternative modes of instruction, such as distance learning, via worksheets distributed either physically or online. This blended learning approach might also include, among others, the use of mass broadcast facilities such as radio and television.
Some friends have been thinking out loud about letting their kids skip the coming school year and treat it as a gap year. This is a very real recourse, especially for those whose livelihoods have been drastically affected by the lockdowns. Some have also voiced their concerns about the effectivity of distance learning—what if it’s just not worth it? Will it be better to wait for the vaccine?
I can’t imagine how stressful it is to be a parent at a time of COVID—there’s just a lot of things to think about. But if I were a kid being raised right now, I think it would be particularly formative for me to see how my parents would steer our family through these messy times.
What do we do now?
When people started talking about What To Do With The Students Amid COVID, or at least when people in my areas of concern started talking about it, they talked about access to technology, infrastructure, devices that would power online education platforms; about equipping teachers with know-how as they transition their face-to-face classes to online classes; about the additional expenses that parents and teachers would have to shoulder to make this possible.
These are expected, of course. How can we expect to transition to online learning so quickly when all these years our education system has struggled with more basic things, such as classroom shortages? (Latest available data on schools with internet access is as of 2016—about four years old. According to this 2019 PIDS study, only about one in four schools has internet access. In the course of four years, have improvements been made?)
As the weeks wore on, the conversation shifted to the parents: How do we support them as the burden to educate their kids shifts to the homes? After all, not all parents are trained educators, although some of my friends who are homeschooling their kids have been trying to share their tips and tricks, so to speak.
Is it possible? A friend says yes, outlining her household’s schedule, which combines both the parents’ Work-From-Home schedules with the kids’ homeschooling requirements. I complimented my friend by saying their kids are lucky to have them as parents; she responded by saying she’s been blessed with good-natured kids.
It’s clear that the success of home-based education set-ups involves both parents and kids. At some point, I do believe the conversation will soon shift to focus on the students themselves—in the end, they will be the ones expected to pull this off, anyway.
At the core of all these interventions, I think the answer we’re all looking for ultimately is: How do we ensure that our kids are successful, regardless of the challenges?
Which brings me to grit.
What is Grit?
If you Google ‘grit’, you’d probably get this TED Talk by Angela Duckworth talking about it. Defined as a combination of passion and sustained persistence in relation to a long-term goal, grit has since been touted as the secret to success, which is viewed here as not so much a function of talent or inherent genius as it is of effort and perseverance.
Prior to studying grit, Duckworth was a middle-school math teacher who wanted answers as to why some of her students are doing better than the others. Is it IQ? Not technically, as some of her high IQ students are not performing very well. If not that, what is it then? Here are some excerpts from Duckworth’s TED Talk:
So I left the classroom, and I went to graduate school to become a psychologist. I started studying kids and adults in all kinds of super challenging settings, and in every study my question was, who is successful here and why?
Duckworth and her research team then went on to study cadets at the West Point Military Academy and contestants at the National Spelling Bee. They also studied teachers working in really tough neighborhoods: Who among them were still going to be teaching by the end of the school year? Of those, who will be the most effective at improving learning outcomes for their students?
In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was grit.
But what is grit?
Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. 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.
I have always been in awe of the dedication of people who train for marathons—their discipline, their consistency, their devotion. I think this mindset applies to a lot of things, not just sports. Being there for something for the long-haul and refusing to give up at the first inkling of hardship is a difficult but necessary skill.
Now that times are hard, it is more important than ever.
Here’s Duckworth talking with the Harvard Business Review about finding and building grit amid the COVID-19 crisis:
At some point in this interview, HBR asks Duckworth how she thinks COVID-19 is going to shape the generation that is coming of age in the middle of it. In response, she shares what she told her own students at Grit Lab, and it stuck with me.
Basically she tells them that we are all living through history, and that now is a good time to think about the stories we’re going to tell our grandchildren down the road, about the pandemic of 2020 and how we managed it, how we managed ourselves through it.
I have a feeling that a lot of our decisions in this period of time will have long-lasting effects, not just on ourselves but on our families, and even on our colleagues. If I were a kid being raised right now, it would not matter to me whether my parents decide to keep me in school or have me skip it for a year—what I would remember though would be their why’s and how’s.
Related readings
Distance learning isn’t working via The Atlantic
How kids learn resilience via The Atlantic
Harvard Business Review’s YouTube channel is a goldmine.
The power and problem of grit via NPR
Thanks for reading.
Xo,
K