About grit and the Growth Mindset

 "I get knocked down,
But I get up again,
They're never gonna keep me down!"

"Tubthumping" - Chimbawamba

About half a week ago, we watched one of the well-known TED Talks in English class as a motif for our class project about dreams. It was a speech given by an asian-looking woman about her career as an educator and psychologist and especially as a researcher in areas related to motivation and reasons of success in areas like teaching, studies and the military.

Long story short, the speech stressed on the significance grit has in terms of success and failure, shown to be not only more important than inherent capacity but also mostly non-related or even inversely related to it. It also introduced an idea, and this is the part of it that called my bluff the most, called the Growth Mindset: it is the belief that failures constitute a positive reinforcement towards success, introduced to kids from the lowest levels of education with the objective of making it a part of their own mindset.

This is the idea I take from it because of all the things that have been proven to be conditioned by education (and by education I mean not only school but also what we see in our environment and get messages from) rather than by own structure: yes, I know this sounds really typical coming from a transgender, but I'm one of those people who believe even gender is built after birth.

The thing is, if there is really a way to take a step in this area and create a generalized mindset promoting grit, motivation and the acceptance of failure, it would not only prove how plastic our minds are but also solve a popular and widespread issue like academic failure is.