ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠGiven that The Country School value for February is commitment, I read with particular interest a recent article in The Washington Post entitled “Self-Discipline May Beat Smarts as Key to Success.” The story told of a recent study published in the journal Psychological Science by researchers Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman. Their key finding was that “self-discipline is a better predictor of academic success than even IQ.” The two psychologists maintain that a key reason American children fall short of their academic potential is that they “have trouble making choices that require them to sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term gain.” In fact they found that students who display high degrees of self-discipline outperform “their more impulsive peers on every academic performance variable, including report card grades, standardized achievement test scores, admission to a competitive high school, and attendance.” Furthermore, “self-discipline measured in the fall predicted more variance in each of these outcomes than did IQ, and unlike IQ, self-discipline predicted gains in academic performance over the school year.”
ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠMany of the daily routines and structures that are in place at The Country School are aimed at building self-discipline. Our small class size allows our teachers to know the children and attend to the intricacies of their performance. The expectation that students devote their best effort to doing their class work, to participating actively, to meeting their commitments, and to completing their homework all foster the development of sound self-discipline. The school's high standards for behavior, cooperation, and positive engagement also reinforce commitment. Our focus on nurturing self-discipline is one reason the school is so quick to communicate with parents if we note that students aren't meeting their obligations. Our learning specialist, division heads, and teachers also deploy special strategies when we detect there are significant issues in these areas.
ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠLike with the inculcation of all important values, home and school must work in concert if students are to benefit from the framework we provide. Ultimately, adults can create the proper conditions and consistently hold children accountable, but the children must do the actual work. Yet by consistently providing the right structure, holding the right expectations, and creating the right circumstances, together we can help build self-discipline, what Duckworth and Seligman call “the royal road to building academic achievement.”