by Head of School John Fixx
When our children were younger, I would fatigue my wife with protestations over the number of trophies and medals our children were winning without doing anything at all. Our son would get a trophy at the end of the soccer season for climbing out of the back of our minivan. He would get a trophy for participating as part of the team in a soccer tournament. He got a T-ball trophy for showing up.
The trophies and medals accumulated on his dresser and made a pretty impressive impression of shininess and achievement. And then one day when he was about 10 years old, he earned a most valuable player trophy after a weekend soccer tournament in which he truly exerted himself, working hard, inspiring his teammates, and refusing to give up against formidable opponents.
He had never heard me speak with my wife about the lunacy of awarding trophies for non-achievement, but the next morning when I walked in his bedroom, all his earlier trophies and medals were shoved back against the wall and the one trophy that he had actually won — actually earned — was standing proudly by itself on the front of the dresser.
I recall that story often and I have told it before because I was so impressed with how my son differentiated between what he had earned and what he had simply been given. I no longer worry about false trophies and empty compliments bestowed on young children, because I do think they are able to differentiate between the two.
That recognition of true achievement AND of hard work makes me proud to serve The Country School. For decades, the school has maintained an Effort List in addition to an Academic Honors List, awarded at the end of each semester. Teachers judge and mark students on their effort in every class, not only on their achievement. Some students make the Effort List and the Academic Honors List pretty regularly. Some students make the Academic Honors List but not the Effort List. And some students make the Effort but not the Academic Honors List.
Which is more important? I imagine the conversations at the dinner table when the lists are published. If a parent has a child who routinely makes Academic Honors but not Effort, the parent will naturally be talking about how the student can increase his or her efforts to use the talents he/she has been given and learn to persevere. At another dinner table, the parents are praising their child for making the Effort List, regardless of whether that child achieved Academic Honors. Those parents must be extraordinarily proud of how hard their daughter or son is working.
I believe that the Effort List at The Country School conveys to our students that we cannot necessarily control the gifts we have been given in mathematics or science or reading or global language or arts or athletics. But we can control how we apply ourselves, how hard we work, how we grow in our ability to delay gratification and how we learn to push through fatigue and/or rebound after a setback. And, in fact, researchers are telling us that those skills – grit, perseverance, resilience – may be more important to long-term success anyway.
An article from Scientific American published earlier this month makes exactly that point. Called “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids,” the article’s sub-headline reads, “HINT: Don't tell your kids that they are. More than three decades of research shows that a focus on ‘process’—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life.” Click here to read the entire article by Stanford Psychology Professor Carol Dweck.
Even students can tell you the wisdom of such thinking. Just as my 10-year-old son symbolically did when he removed the “empty” trophies and displayed the one he really earned on his dresser, a Country School 7th Grader explicitly made the case for valuing effort over innate intelligence when he delivered a TED-style talk during TEDxYouthDay this fall at Connecticut College.
In his talk, Harrison described how, after his first soccer game at age 6, his parents told him he did a great job. He remembered that his uncle told his parents that it would actually better if they praised him for his effort, and Harrison described how he came to agree with his uncle. In fact, he cited research by Carol Dweck (she of theScientific American article), in which she shows how 5th Graders performed better when they were praised for effort as opposed to performance. Here is Harrison's conclusion: “In the future, if schools apply this, everyone will be thinking and raising their hands and participating. Nobody will be afraid to share their ideas…. Someone really super smart with great ideas may be just afraid to share their ideas.
“In the long term, everyone would be thinking like they could do anything and everyone would be bouncing ideas off each other, which would be great because eventually something amazing would come up and everyone would benefit. Collaboration … technology of the future … we could do anything if we all come together. And it all starts by being praised for effort.”
Click on this link to watch Harrison's entire talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndu7sIKiyBU.
It is worth noting that Harrison delivered his talk, which was filled with statistics, without using notes. Here’s what the organizers of the TEDx event had to say about Harrison and his theory: “Praise can push us to achieve our best, but it can also hinder us. Harrison addresses this dualism and suggests a new way of fostering self-confidence and drive in children. By praising children for level of effort instead of raw intelligence, we instill them with confidence in their own ability and a greater sense of self worth.”
The TEDx organizers then went on to describe Harrison. He is a “middle school student at The Country School in Madison, CT,” they wrote. “He is a charismatic young man, wise beyond his years.”
We couldn’t agree more, and we also offer our congratulations and praise to the five other Country School students who opted – entirely voluntarily, using their own time and exerting their own effort – to participate in the TEDxYouth Day. Click here to watch videos of all the participants, including TCS 7th Graders Nate, Alex, Aidan, Evie, and Dan.
Likewise, we thank the two Country School alumni – Marina Sachs ’07 and Ben Ballard ’08 – who used their gifts AND effort to organize TEDxYouthDay at Connecticut College, the first all-Middle School TEDx event in history, as we understand it. We thank them for approaching us to see if any Country School students wanted to participate, and we thank all those who answered the call. Now that, I would say, deserves a trophy – for both effort and accomplishment!
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