Becoming Succesful Requires Persistence – For All the Wrong Reasons

Just a while back we relayed the latest research of Carol S. Dweck who has taken a lengthy look at raising successful children. In a nutshell, Dweck concluded that if you want to raise smart and successful youngsters, the key area to focus upon was the development of a work ethic.

A recent post by a reader on the New York Times, Freakonomics blog raises some similar points yet focuses in on the later part of a youngster’s education, the high school and post-secondary academic time period. In his conclusions, Paul Kimelman, the Chief Technical Officer of Luminary Micro, suggests the most important predictor for success just might be persistence.

Readers at first glance might see this as reaffirmation of the work of Dweck. However, Kimelman speaks of a doggedness of a far different type, the ability for some folks to succeed in spite of an educational system that seeks to create a sense of conformity with all participants.

In summation, he too speaks of the term we raised, the concept of resilience. It’s just that educators will not be pleased to hear that Kimelman’s resilience is actually a negative by-product of the current educational system.

Interesting Fundamental Question
Rather than being a regular contributor, Kimelman is writing in as the reader of the blog when he offers the following intro:

“I was speaking with a colleague the other day and he was remarking on an accomplishment I have had in my field (of microprocessor design). He assumed I had been a straight-A student all through school.

“When I noted that I was far from it, he was shocked. This got me to thinking: we usually just assume that somehow grades in school (at any level) are predictors of future success, or certainly of intelligence.”

Kimelman is more than willing to take a stance, stating “I highly doubt it.” He goes on to state that he has tried to find some studies that tied GPA to life success but found that most of them had real weaknesses.

Defining Success
First, in the discussion of GPA predicting success in life, the greatest challenge is that of defining what is meant by the word success. Kimelman notes that defining a metric for success and putting a scale to that metric is not an easy task.

One could look at earned income as one definition, but as Kimelman notes, there are major problems with using earnings as a metric. Here, educators can be exceedingly thankful that he offers the following as one of his concrete examples.

“A highly successful grade-school teacher (measured by students who become motivated [by that teacher], and [were] thus successful) will always do poorly compared to even a middling professional football player.”

As for any additional suggestion regarding earnings as the key metric, Kimelman also notes that some of the most successful lawyers do significant amounts of pro bono work. Those lawyers who choose to help society in that manner will potentially earn far less than the lawyers who focus in on chasing ambulances.

The C.T.O. also notes that hierarchy is also a limiting criterion. He notes properly that “few fields have clear gradations or career paths.”

Defining Good Grades
As for grades, Kimelman notes that not only is there the inability to compare grades from different institutions, there is simply no way to compare them within specific schools. Most would suggest that it is wrong to assume that a person who “gets all A’s in communications” is “working as hard as someone who gets all A’s in physics.”

But is it?

While many assume that the physics field is more difficult, Kimelman asks: “Why would we assume that physics is harder than, say, literary critique?” He notes that in-depth literary critique requires a deeper understanding of what is to be done than a course that focuses simply on memorizing materials or the repetition of “well-defined steps.”

In addition, he points out that in the school setting, there is often an emphasis on homework completion at the expense of actual understanding. Therefore schools are often measuring “behavior and compliance far more than what has been learned.”

Such a focus works against those folks who tend to be more creative. Notes Kimelman, “Creative people tend to do worse on grades at each level of schooling, yet their success measures can be very high in their fields. Even trying to separate out creative people in schools is hard, as much of their behavior is similar to those who are just lazy, have A.D.H.D., or are generally disruptive.”

The Critical Attribute
By the completion of his assessment, Kimelman gets to what he sees as the heart of the matter.

“What interests me is whether the present system actually produces more success or heavily limits it. Would a different system with less emphasis on conformity produce more of our best and brightest? Or does the annealing effect of being crushed by the system help to produce those best and brightest?”

He then postures:

“If you look at those who have commonly advanced our thinking, our abilities, our technologies, and our economy (through business sense), many did poorly in schools, yet they persisted. The persistence may have been the critical element, and it would have perhaps been lost had they been encouraged more.”

And then, in the most painful of thoughts, he asks:

“So does this mean we need more of those mediocre middle school and high school teachers acting as the forge to both create the worker bees we need, as well as the best [and most successful] by trying to destroy them?”

The statement certainly has to make every caring teacher cringe. And as for persistence, we noted earlier that Kimelman is discussing a doggedness of a different kind.

His persistence is the notion that some become successful in their careers in spite of the educational system. Kimelman’s view centers upon the notion that the system represents such an obstacle that it weeds out the weaker, creative, non-conforming types who simply do not have the levels of persistence necessary to succeed in spite of what school has done.

Kimelman hearkens to the very points made by Sir Ken Robinson, over at Ted.com, that schools tend to kill creativity, and ends by asking readers to write in with their thoughts. We plan to follow those comments to see what readers have to say.

Flickr photos courtesy of Truth Lying, JOV, and Stevefaeembra.