Posted on 05/16/2009 11:12:18 PM PDT by Schnucki
The New Yorker has a fascinating essay this week on self-control in children and the role it plays in their life chances. The story starts with a Stanford academic who experimented on whether children when left alone with a sweet of their choice would delay eating it in exchange for being allowed to eat two later. The study found that when these children grew up “the child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.” Another study in a school found that “the ability to delay gratification—eighth graders [13 to 14 year-olds] were given a choice between a dollar right away or two dollars the following week—was a far better predictor of academic performance than I.Q. [Angela Lee Duckworth] said that her study shows that “intelligence is really important, but it’s still not as important as self-control.”
This suggests that schools should place greater emphasis on teaching pupils self-control (the article makes clear it can be taught). Obviously in an ideal world children would have picked this skill up at home but that is, sadly, not going to have happened in lots of cases. Failing to teach pupils about this, is just going to further disadvantage children from unstable backgrounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.co.uk ...
hurry up, science, baptise common sense so that this idiot generation can think it’s ok to use it.
/sarc
The New Yorker essay is well worth reading in its entirety. (I let my NYer sub lapse because of Seymour Hirsch ... but I may have to reconsider!) Thanks for posting! Great info for parents.
My Lord. They do everything to chase this sort of education away and find these spiritual and religious principles make for better SAT scores and want to put in back in the ‘curriculum’ absent God of course. What a mass delusion we live in with these folks. Evil has them by the stones.
ping for reading later
My guess is that the “researchers” that conducted this study couldn’t wait ten nanoseconds to spend the money to make these idiotic claims.
>> hurry up, science, baptise common sense so that this idiot generation can think it’s ok to use it.
That’s hilarious, and so true.
Although “baptise” might not be the appropriate metaphor to use with this “idiot generation”. Maybe “Hurry up, science, gay marry commone sense etc.”
Obviously in an ideal world children would have picked this skill up at home but that is, sadly, not going to have happened in lots of cases.
No, it won't happen soon. We live in an Instant Gratification society.
At a certain level, self-control can be taught. But self-control is a manifestation of intelligence, b/c it is based on advanced thought processes and the ability to foresee consequences, strategize and plan ahead.
Excellent article.
Thx.
etc etc ad-freaking-infinitum.
Ping for later.
bmflr
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