It takes a little more grit...

This week while reading Time magazine I came across an article that automatically caught my eye.  It read "Failure Is Not a Bad Option".  Almost any student cringes at the sound of the word failure.  So how can  failure be a good option? Parents strictly believe that children should get good grades will do well at a university and ultimately be successful in life.  This is the common belief among all parents, but this article challenges that and states that a little more grit is what kids really need.  Grit is a firmness of character which allows kids to actually succeed at a university, instead  of just being qualified based on IQ and SAT scores.  The article also focuses on the mental affects education has on children.  A family therapist named Madeline Levine counsels young kids to emphasis less on grades, more on values, less on homework, and more on sleep.  Levine captures the idea of the article that failure is not bad! To succeed in college, we need to work on skills like the ability to persist, focus, and adapt.  Therefore, unlike most people belief, it's NOT all about the grades!

This article was so appealing because it breaks the social norms of education.  This topic was one that I hoped I could focus on while blogging about education.  I thought that it was interesting to first look at what parents value for their children: great grades, attending a university, and having a successful life.  Our parents' values directly affect our approach towards our education.  We rely on memorization and cramming to achieve the perfect score on a test so that we can get into the best college.  This article challenges these norms though.  Instead, it takes the approach that scores are not what is going to get us through college.  It takes a firmness in character, otherwise known as grit.  SAT scores associate a student with just a number, which is not a very good basis of whether the person is well-rounded or not. I think it was interesting in this article to see how contrasting norms of society are to what is actually valued in the long run in college. The agents of socialization such as our families and peer groups have direct influence on our behaviors in our studies.  Levine shows how we value the wrong things and should focus more on getting sleep and staying healthy! SLEEP...every student's dream (no pun intended).  I loved how I was able to gain a different perspective on the valued aspects of education through this article!