Angela Duckworth talks about helping children develop grit and resiliance | Homeroom with Sal

Hi everyone! Welcome to the daily homeroom live stream style here from Khan Academy. For those of you all who are new to this, this is a live stream that we've been doing every day since we've had these global school closures, just as a way to stay connected. Obviously, Khan Academy—our whole team—we were trying to put out resources starting in early learning with Khan Academy Kids, all the way through elementary, middle, and high school, and even early college to keep you learning. But we also want to provide more supports.

We've been running parent webinars, teacher webinars, this homeroom live stream, where we're going to have really interesting guests, including today. I'm especially excited about this. But I do want to give my standard announcement reminding folks that we are a not-for-profit. We only can exist because of philanthropic donations. We're running at a deficit even before COVID hit, and now with COVID, we're seeing our traffic 3x of what it typically is. We are trying to do more programs and ways to support you, so if you're in a position to do so, please think about donating.

I want to give special thanks to several corporations that have stepped up, really in record time, to support this effort: Bank of America— that first weekend when they saw that we needed, they stepped up to help us out; Google.org; AT&T; Fastly; and Novartis—thank all of them. And even with their significant support, we still need more help. So if you represent a corporation, please talk to us! And if you're just an individual donor, that still makes a huge, huge, huge difference for our ability to serve tens of millions of folks around the world.

So with that, I am super excited to introduce our guest, Angela Duckworth. In certain circles, she is a mega star. I would say I've known Angela for many years. I think we ran into each other at a conference in Canada—this was like eight, nine, or ten years ago—uh, eight or nine years ago. But even then, I knew Angela was on to something, and since then, her notoriety has just exploded because the things she talks about are so relevant to education, especially relevant to the time that we're dealing with right now.

So Angela, thank you for joining us!

Angela Duckworth: Thank you, Sal! And I'm going to tell you a secret: You didn't just run into me! I actually flew to Canada because someone told me that you were going to be there, and I ran into you—not by accident, so I was stalking you.

Sal Khan: Well, you see this is how the tables have turned because now I kind of stalk you.

Angela Duckworth: You just email me! It's a lot easier for me to fly to Canada!

Sal Khan: Exactly! So I'm glad that we are mutually stalking each other. I'm going to start off the conversation, but I do want to encourage everyone who's watching on YouTube and Facebook to put questions in there for Angela. You're going to learn a lot more about her areas of expertise, if you don't already know of them. But I will start. Angela, you're known—you’re one of really a handful of, I would say, pioneers or leaders in this field of mindset research, and you're really known for grit, defining it in more precise terms.

So just explain what mindset research is and your view on it, especially relative to grit.

Angela Duckworth: The term mindset has caught on; I have to think that it's got to be almost maybe the most commonly understood new scientific discovery in psychology, among non-psychologists, right? Among parents, and kids, and educators. So what is mindset? Your mindsets are beliefs that you have about the world or about human nature that drive so much of your behavior. They may not be beliefs that you think about actively, but they're very powerful.

In particular, Carol Dweck at Stanford, our common friend and really my hero, she's worked her whole life on something called growth mindset—your beliefs about your intelligence. You can either have a growth mindset, which is the belief that intelligence is malleable, that your abilities can change, or you can have a fixed mindset, which is the belief that they can't change—that you know, you are who you are. You're either a math person or not; you're a natural athlete or not.

And in my research on grit, which is passionate and persevering effort towards long-term goals, I find—and I think our early work with Carol, but in subsequent studies also—that kids who have a growth mindset about intelligence tend to become grittier. And then those increases in grit tend to lead to increases in growth mindset, so there's a kind of virtuous cycle. When a kid really believes that their abilities can change, they're more likely to persevere, to try hard at things, which then reinforces that belief.

And just to make sure I understand these because I often say these in the same sentence and they are very close in—the growth mindset is I believe that I can do more; I just have to step out of my comfort zone and apply myself. And if I fail at something, it's not a judgment on some type of innate ability; it's a moment to learn from. While grit is that ability to stick to it.

Angela Duckworth: Yeah, I would say grit is like doing it, right? And mindset might be why you’re doing it right. So the mindset is like the underlying belief that would motivate a certain pattern of behavior that I would describe as grit.

And let me just say, because, you know, my kids are still teenagers, and I’m sure a lot of people have kids who are even younger than ours. I think that it's not just—when I think of grit, I don’t think just of like working hard. It's also loving what you do. It's also being intrinsically motivated over long periods of time. So that's just a part of grit that I hope you know we can talk about in this conversation because I don't want parents to get the message that the only thing kids need to do is develop a work ethic; they also have to develop interests, loves, passions.

Sal Khan: Yeah, and that's, I think, a good segue. I mean, you know, you're a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. You've been doing research for a while. You have a best-selling book named—not a surprise—Grit.

Angela Duckworth: [Laughter] No imagination there on the title.

Sal Khan: No! The Power of Passion and Perseverance. I think, you know, a question that a lot of parents are asking—my wife asked me to ask you this when she saw that I was walking into the walk-in closet to interview you right now—and it's a question that has been coming up throughout the school closures is that there's a lot of resources out there. There's Khan Academy; we've put out daily schedules. But what is tangible advice for parents, teachers, or students for themselves to have that grit to be able to act on that growth mindset, so to speak?

Angela Duckworth: So I think that, not only for grit but for lots of other things that we would love our kids to develop as they grow older, the combination of challenge and support is magical. If you ask the question like, "What are good parents?"—like what does the science of parenting say—there's now decades of research on parenting styles. And the style of parenting that is the best, really! I can just say that flat out: it's the best. Your kids will be happier, they'll be more socially adjusted, but they'll also be more accomplished. It’s this combination of being very supportive but also being demanding; so you could say it's tough love.

Now, why do I bring that up now in the middle of the COVID crisis? Because kids are being challenged, so their challenges have been, I think in all cases, and in many different ways, raised. Right? Now the question is, like, how as parents can you meet that with increased support? Not trivial because we're under our own stress, etc. But if you ask the question to me like, "Where does psychological growth come from?" it comes from this combination of like, "I'm being asked to do something I can't yet do," but there's a floor beneath me, there's a foundation, there's unconditional support—there's Khan Academy, you know? There are people who will help me, you know, like make a schedule so I can go on Khan Academy.

So I think parents can respond to this crisis by in some ways thinking of it as an opportunity for their kids to develop these qualities. I call them character strengths, but you can call them SEL skills; you can call them anything you want. And I really do think it's not too Pollyanna to say that it is an opportunity to do all those things.

Sal Khan: And what would you— I mean, it's impressive that there are, I mean, people have done the research and they've been able to categorize different styles, and what you're describing seems to be the winning style. And I'm personally insecure to see how well—I hope no one audits me, gives me a quiz or watches our family, but what, either from your research or just as a parent that you've seen, a good practice. I know y'all have done a lot of research on interventions that can help change people's mindsets.

So, I mean, one, I would love to hear about that research, and then are there things—let's say hypothetically you were to have a five-and-a-half-year-old at home or an eight-year-old, for example. I don't know, some people I know, and you know, they sometimes do their work, but they may be just doing the minimum, or sometimes they don't even want to do that because they feel like there's a little less accountability now. What does the research tell us, and what advice would you have for this hypothetical person that I know?

Angela Duckworth: Well, you know, I have a non-hypothetical 17 and a non-hypothetical 18-year-old, but you know, a non-hypothetical five-and-a-half-year-old, it sounds like on your end. So, I think one of the challenges of parenting is to always be titrating to where your kids are because when I said that you need to be—and I do believe this—you need to be a demanding parent. I don't think kids—I mean kids need parents, like they need us to ask them to do things that they can’t yet or wouldn’t on their own do. But the titration part is, you know, how much is a stretch for your kid at this particular moment in time? And also at this stage in their development, it may not be the same as it is even for another kid in the same family.

So the titration is how to have your kids, you know, be challenged but not too much. For example, you know, when parents have an idealistic goal of like their kids waking up, making a schedule for the day, and sticking to the schedule, you know, if you start with a really unrealistic goal and you ask your kid to get there, you know, immediately, then everybody just gets discouraged and frustrated.

So one piece of parenting advice is to take stock of where your kids are and then try to move like ten percent right as opposed to like a hundred percent toward something that you think is better. In general, I find that even adults procrastinate and don't do well when they fail to break down big goals into smaller parts and then, you know, make a more reasonable schedule about how they're going to accomplish, you know, go down the list.

Sal Khan: That's good advice, not just for parenting. I mean, I just, while you were saying that, I'm thinking about some of the things that my wife and I have attempted to do, especially with some of our younger kids. I was like, "Yeah, maybe if we just broke that down a little bit more or just expected the first step of that." And then once—I mean, this is what you do so well—like, by the way, I mean, I will just say you have taught my kids since, you know, as you do so many kids around the world. Like, and you may not have known, but the reason I flew to Canada to stalk you was because my kids were spending so much time learning from you on Khan Academy, and I, you know, just got really interested in, you know, how psychologists like me might learn something from you and be helpful.

And I think what you do so well, Sal, is you break things down, you know, into like parts so that, so that like you can swallow it kind of like a teaspoon at a time. And I think kids need our help as parents to help them, you know, do that. And I sometimes feel like, you know, parents might have unrealistic expectations about, you know, like how much progress they can expect their kid to make when it comes to self-regulation or time management or discipline.

And it helps to remember that the great teachers know to break things down.

Sal Khan: No, well I think you're being very flattering! But I think the point is right, and I think as parents, as much as we try to be centered, we can also sometimes feel an urgency like, "Wait! I heard someone else's kid has, you know, has their whole schedule—is doing everything perfectly?" And then, and you're probably doing the wrong thing to your kid, and you're trying to get them from zero to that. And that other child probably isn't doing that. There's probably a little bit of marketing involved there. We probably all have stories of, you know, a child in my—in my family was always these like cousins that I have in Boston who, you know, were seemingly perfect. And actually now that I'm all grown up, I realize they were pretty much perfect and they all became, you know, like Harvard professors.

But, but, yeah. Wait, you're the non-perfect one in the family who knows what they're doing.

Angela Duckworth: I think I'm the black sheep!

Sal Khan: But yes, there’s a very distinguished branch of our family, but I'm not in it. So, you know, why do parents make those comparisons? I think they're just, you know, they kind of just come to mind for the parent because they are, you know, like, "Oh, that's the mental model I have in my head." So I'll just share it with you, but I don't think kids benefit very much from those kinds of comparisons.

In general, in schooling, I think—and I'm thinking, I know you have a global audience, but I'm thinking about the American schooling system—you know, it's a very kind of rank order, like "How are you relative to these other like 900 kids who are your age?" And those kind of comparisons—like, "Am I as smart as her? Am I smarter than him?"—I don't think they're super beneficial most of the time.

I think kids actually benefit from making a different kind of comparison, which is: "How am I compared to how I want to be, compared to how I was?" And that's a comparison that you can do something with. And that's a comparison that, you know, doesn't diminish another person while you are making progress.

And you know when I think about Khan Academy and your whole philosophy—you know, you have a book too, which I read—and your whole philosophy of like how education ought to work, I really do think it's, you know, it's you with you and like how far you can go and not you and your cousins in Boston or you and, you know, the 899 kids who are also in your graduating class.

And I mean with that thought there's a ton of questions coming in. I want to get to those questions, but I'll ask one of my last indulgent-style questions, which is you've done a lot of research that you can—you can change people's mindsets. I mean tell us a little bit about some of the research that will give all of us a growth mindset about changing our kids' mindset about grit.

Angela Duckworth: Well, I’ll tell you about a big study that was run recently and published in Nature. It was a huge scientific team led by David Yeager at UT Austin and, um, also of course Carol Dweck was involved. I was just one among many team members. But what it was was an experiment to see whether we could increase growth mindset in ninth graders all over the United States.

The experiment was a success, and if you ask the question like what did you do; how did you increase growth mindset? There were these brief, really, I'm just, you know, minutes-long activities where students learned that lots of other kids around their age, you know, also sometimes feel stupid when they get something wrong. And they can kind of slip into like, "Oh, I'll never learn this," um, mode. But then they learned about the neuroscience—that's actually true that the brain is plastic, that there is tremendous growth. And when you do struggle and you make a mistake and you look at it again, your brain actually changes.

So for me, when I think about this, one of the reasons why intelligence is a hard thing to get kids to understand like that it is malleable is because it's invisible. It's like it's—it’s in your—you know, you can't see your brain, right? Whereas if you said to a kid like, "Do you think if you lifted all these weights, you know, your biceps would get bigger?" they would say like, "Of course!" But intelligence is kind of behind, you know, the forehead, so you don’t see it.

Anyway, ninth graders learned about the modern neuroscience of brain plasticity, and then the last thing that they did was they actually wrote a letter to other students that were, you know, for example, like a little younger than you: "Like what would you say? How would you summarize all this for them?"

And I think this combination of feeling like, "Oh, I hear the voices of other students who, you know, can sometimes feel dumb when they do something," but then they learn to not feel that way—to understand mistakes as growth and learning. You get some scientific evidence, and then you are put in the position of communicating that to other students. I think it's quite brilliant, honestly.

And in this study, there were measurable increases in mindset—growth mindset—and then also, um, particularly for students who had schools where the culture supported it, there were also improvements in grades.

Sal Khan: Wow! Just to make sure, you should say test scores. I think they were so cool—I should like check on that. I think it was like math grades and test scores.

Angela Duckworth: But no, but either way, that's very compelling! I mean, are there ways for parents to get that intervention for either themselves or their kids?

Angela Duckworth: Yeah, I'll make sure that you all have the hyperlink to the work and some of this work was supported by the Mindset Scholars Network, and, you know, there's a link where you can actually get this also for educators. I mean, I'll make sure that you have the right resources. And finally, I'll just say, I think parents should read Carol's book. I mean, they should read your book too; they should read lots of books! But I think Mindset is a terrific and it’s a fast read; it’s beautifully written—good advice!

Sal Khan: So there are a lot of questions here. So from YouTube, Joe asks, "Angela, can you use grit to force yourself to have a passion for something you have little interest in, for example a job?"

Angela Duckworth: No! If you want more than a one-word answer, I can elaborate, but I don't think that you can force yourself to be passionate about things. When I measure intrinsic motivation, feeling genuinely curious about things and also feeling like your work is aligned with your personal values—that is what's correlated with grit, not extrinsic, you know, like "I was coerced to do it," or "I'll make a lot of money if I do it."

So I think for, um, for me, the advice would not be to try to force yourself, but actually to find, if you're already an adult, like to find a job that is more closely aligned with your developed interests and your values. And if you're still a kid, I would say, you know, the word you want to use about passion is develop. I think you want to develop passions that are mature, and that requires, you know, lots and lots of time, you know, doing things, becoming more and more and more interested in them and committed to them. But I don't think it's a process of forcing yourself or for anybody else to force you either.

Sal Khan: And this is really interesting because, so, you know, grit, when people think of the word, just in the colloquial sense, they think of like being able to power through pain. You can exhibit the qualities of grit, but it's not because you're powering through pain; it's because you're intrinsically motivated in what you're doing.

Angela Duckworth: Yeah, and I don't want to paint this like, you know, look, you work really hard, Sal; I work really hard. I think there are parts of our day where we don't want to do what we have to do, but we have to do it. But I would say about myself—and I'm sure that you would say, right, like you love what you do! You love what you do!

Sal Khan: Yeah!

Angela Duckworth: And so, yeah, there's practice, and there's hard work, and there's getting over disappointment. Nobody loves doing it. But overall, you love what you do. And I think that's the part that's missing in that syllable word; it doesn't sound like it. But when I study it and when I find it in a really high performer, it's really always there.

Sal Khan: You know, I'll talk a hack that I think is related to Joe's question and I think it's consistent with what you said, but I have no scientific backing other than my n of one and what's going on in my own bizarre head, which is one of my skills that I think is related to Joe's question and I'm quite proud of is I can convince myself to be passionate about almost anything!

Angela Duckworth: Wait! Give me an example.

Sal Khan: Almost any. You know, well, I mean a lot of people in Khan—I mean they can hear it in my voice sometimes in these videos—like I'm excited about the aldol reaction. And they're like, "Why?" I was like, "Well, I won’t even make the video until I am excited about it." Because there is something exciting, you know, in academics. What I remind students is almost everything is the culmination of someone's life work. And they would have done— they would have killed to have the answers that you have in your textbook or that are being explained to you on a Khan Academy video. And that by itself makes it exciting!

You know, and even things as part of my job that aren’t like my favorite thing, you know, I love our auditors; they're great people! But, you know, sitting in, like a meeting about our audit report is it like, you know, what I click my heels, but I remind myself: no, this isn’t a very important step in order for us to become a real organization; in order for us to serve more people. So I definitely do that—that I remind myself why what I’m doing matters.

And you know, I had a boss that told me my first—you know, I was working at a big company and there were times where I was like, "Oh, it doesn’t matter if I show up or not. I’m kind of a cog in this big thing," and he said, "Look, you just have to show up and make yourself and make the company better off today than it was yesterday." And there’s something about that that made me feel very motivated about it. And I'm like, "Oh yeah, yeah! I can get passionate about that!"

But I think we're consistent. As long as you can get yourself authentically passionate and motivated, then you can—the grit will kind of happen or can happen?

Angela Duckworth: Yeah! And okay, so you said, "Oh, this is your end of one." Like, let me give you a little science behind that. So when you think about why you have to go to an auditing meeting or think about kids doing their homework, right? I mean so many kids feel like, "Why am I doing this? This is totally pointless." What they're feeling is that there isn't any purpose to their work.

There isn't any like, "This is a means, but what’s the end?" And so what maybe your boss did—and certainly what human beings do—is it's useful to think about your goals hierarchically. Like, you know, why am I on this video with Khan Academy with Sal Khan? It’s because, actually, I believe that psychological science can help kids thrive. So for me, this time that we're spending together has a purpose!

If a kid is doing their homework and they see the point of doing these, you know, practice problems, like—and they see the point of this class overall—it’s really like what you're doing is you’re helping them see the kind of the goal that sits above this goal! Like, "Oh, this is the reason why I’m doing it." The hierarchy makes sense to me.

So I agree with you that sometimes we forget and then we have to remind ourselves, and then it gives meaning and purpose to something that otherwise would be mundane. But I guess I wouldn't go so far as recommending to people that you could make yourself passionate about everything. I don't think that's what you're saying.

Sal Khan: No, for sure, for sure! I mean, there's definitely an optimization when I have a choice! I definitely am optimizing for what fills my bucket, so to speak! And I’m learning about a five-year-old’s language and what feels right, my bucket. But no, it’s an interesting—you know, I have to ponder that; I have to meditate on that more. Am I living in my own delusion or not? I think you—you’ve made it.

Here's why. I just taught this undergraduate class called Grit Lab to 60 undergraduates at my university, University of Pennsylvania. And when I had to summarize the entire class in the last hour of the class, I said, "All right, three things: Choose easy, work hard, pay it forward." And the choose easy was about choosing things that you're naturally or intrinsically interested in—they feel like they resonate with your values. You're good at them! Or like, I actually think that's the part that you did: you chose something that you're very, very good at, and committed to it resonates with your deepest values! You love learning; you probably love teaching!

Okay, then what's number two? What number two is work hard! And number two is, you know, what the audit is part of running Khan Academy; you know, what raising money is part of Khan Academy; I'm sure you don’t like that either! You know what—like doing whatever it is that you need to do. And I think that's where you're using these mental hacks to kind of like get yourself to be excited about an audit.

And that's the part where you do need to use discipline and strategies to work hard. And by the way, the third part is pay it forward. Right? So, you know, for every good person in life, you know, that means doing things for other people. But I do think that sometimes young people get these confused, and they think they should choose hard and that the work should be easy. But no, no, you choose things that are kind of fluent and fluid for you, and then there's always going to be friction. And that's when you have to learn all these ways to work hard. Does that make any sense?

Angela Duckworth: No, I mean, it made a ton of sense! It was a fascinating conversation. And you know, whenever we're having these good conversations, the time goes by far faster than I would like! I hope we have more time to have this conversation because I think we're just getting started.

And maybe we have time for one more question from YouTube. Sanjeev Kumar asks, "Can anyone develop grit at any age, or is it more specific for children and young adults?"

Angela Duckworth: I really do believe that one of the great lessons of psychological science over the last few decades is that we are remarkably malleable. In other words, Carol Dweck is not only right about intelligence, but about pretty much every other facet of human nature. And I'm not saying that you can metamorphose into like some completely different human being in a day, but I do think, yeah, you can develop growth mindset; you can develop grit; you can become a nicer person; you can become a better listener; you can become a little more emotional—all of those things! And it's not just childhood, and it's not just adolescence, and it's not even just early adulthood or middle adulthood. There's not a point in the entire span of a life where people stop learning and growing if they're open to it.

Sal Khan: Wow! I want us to have a conversation about each of those things because I want all of them! I would love to have another conversation, Sal! You know I'm a huge fan of Khan Academy, and I'm a huge fan of yours!

Sal Khan: Let's book it because I think we're just getting started! I mean, there's so many questions, folks; I'm trying to see if I could squeeze one more in. Let's see—this is a big one.

But from YouTube, the LOL A asks, "Where does passion come from? I'm 31 and still trying to find my passion. I don't find anything interesting enough to put my soul into. Any thoughts there?"

Angela Duckworth: I have some thoughts!

Sal Khan: Okay, well you start with your thoughts, Nana, and Ryan, and this will be our good last question. What are your thoughts?

Angela Duckworth: My quick advice for Bilal is: Make space for exploration! I had that same angst when I was young. I had good jobs, but they weren't my passion! But I had space for exploration and through that space for exploration, I was able to find my true passion.

Angela Duckworth: Okay, that’s great advice! I agree with you. And when I was 31, I was crying and crying on my living room couch, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life—literally! I mean, ask my husband; the couch was nearly salty with like, you know, you could almost see the precipitate of the salt on the surface of the pillows—I was crying that much!

And I really sympathize with this feeling of like, "Oh my gosh, I'm trying to have a passion, but I don't know what it is." And for me it was, you know, giving myself a little freedom, but I think also it was reflecting on what I had become interested in in the past.

And when I thought back to when I was 16 years old, I remembered that when I was 16, I went to summer school because my parents, who were very cheap, like wouldn’t pay for anything until like their kids could pay for it. So I had saved up all my money, and the first time I could afford to do anything over the summer was when I was 16.

So I got to choose and I opened up that course catalog. And what did I choose? I chose two classes: psychology and non-fiction writing. And that’s essentially all I do all day: psychology and nonfiction writing.

So I guess I would suggest that if you're a 31-year-old who, like me, was maybe crying a lot—very honest written—is that in addition to giving yourself some space for self-exploration, is try to recall in your life the times where you were interested in things or you were excited—and you might be able to piece together some of the puzzle. And I kid you not, when I was 32, I just like, I had thought about—I was like, "Oh, I'm interested in psychology; I'm interested in writing; I used to teach math; that must mean I'm pretty good at math or I like math—I don’t know!" And I think I should be a psychologist. And then I went to graduate school!

Sal Khan: Wow! And then you became Angela Duckworth!

Angela Duckworth: Well, well then I learned a lot about psychology, I'll say that!

Sal Khan: Yeah! I think for me, I would say that now my work is my calling and it is who I am. I think about it all the time. I think about if I wake up in the middle of the night; I think about it on Sunday morning; I think about it on Friday night. And I think that's what this 31-year-old wants. They want that, and it was a process! I don't want to say it happened, you know, in a moment in time, but there was, you know, a long period of struggle.

And I do empathize with that and I have a lot of hope for you because, you know, you too, Sal, probably couldn’t have foreseen that this would be your calling, but it is! And callings generally, you know, take a while to develop and to deepen over time.

Sal Khan: Oh, that's incredible, incredible advice. And Angela, I think I’ll commit us; we’re going to have at least one more conversation. So thank you so much for joining us! Thanks, everyone else, for joining us! As you can tell, we wish we could do this for a long time more. But we will! It's good to end on a high point of people wanting more.

So please join us for future live streams. Tomorrow, if I'm correct, I think we're going to have Jim Nondor from the University of Chicago, the head of admissions there. So look forward to seeing all of y'all tomorrow! Thanks, Angela!

Angela Duckworth: Bye!