Learning - is it a skill, or will??

I wrote in the last blog post about the role attention plays in our students success, or at least how narrowly we have focussed on scores and how that might be impacting on their success. It seems that quite a few people are thinking about related issues. I came across some comments in Steve Miranda's blog recently that build on the idea that success in life is dependent on more that just academic success. Perhaps we could extend that idea to include the thought that it takes more than just being gifted to succeed.

 Steve's comment:

The students who persisted  in college were not necessarily the ones who had excelled academically..... they were the ones with exceptional character strengths, like optimism, persistence and social intelligence. 

Daniel Pink in his book Drive  also emphasized the importance of passion and persistence over talent. And I have just started another book called Bounce  (by Matthew Syed) which (so far) seems to propose that talent is more a matter of opportunity than innate ability.

It is important to help kids develop strong character and nurture their natural intrinsic motivation to learn. Then they are not only more likely to develop personal traits needed to be successful but also gather a great deal of academic learning along the way as a result.