Hector Irizarry

3-25-17
Research Paper
Ms. O’Keefe

In today's society there are many issues and controversies. Some of the more known
issues or controversies are racism, rights, disagreement on laws or beliefs, and crime. Despite all
these issues and controversies being major and important in society and in America there is an up
and coming issue. The up and coming issue is how well can people or teens manage their grit
and resilience. The three perspectives associated with this controversy is what kids have trouble
managing their grit and resilience, how people in their jobs develop grit and resilience, and why
people need grit and resilience in their life. Some think that in point of view one can vary but in
general kids who come from a harder background tend struggle with these skills more than more
fortunate kids. In the second point of view people believe they need to learn to persevere through
their struggles in order to become a better and more efficient worker in their job or work area. In
point of view three people believe they need grit and resilience to able to live life successfully
because of the passion and motivation they create into completing things at a satisfying effort.
These different opinions stem from disagreements about who benefits from grit and resilience
research, and why is grit and resilience needed.

Grit and resilience give hope to those who are hopeless. The unfortunate need the use of
grit and resilience while the fortunate dwell in the pleasures of their blessings and born in grit
and resilience stable families. ​Paul Tough who wrote about unfortunate kids struggling with
developing grit and resilience ​states, “The truth, as many American teachers know firsthand, is
that low-income children can be harder to educate than children from more-comfortable
backgrounds. Educators often struggle to motivate them, to calm them down, to connect with
them. This doesn’t mean they’re impossible to teach, of course; plenty of kids who grow up in
poverty are thriving in the classroom. But two decades of national attention have done little or
nothing to close the achievement gap between poor students and their better-off peers.” The less
fortunate come from backgrounds that make it harder for them to exhibit their talents and skills
making it necessary for grit and resilience to shine through. Lower class students are harder to
motivate as they require much more work to make it to bigger, better places than those above
them. However, others believe that struggles make for more efficient people.​ ​Scott Seibert who
wrote about grit and resilience in the workplace states​, “It’s wise to expect the unexpected to
occur at some point in your career. This is why it is important to build resilience and adaptability
into your career — before the unforeseen happens.”Exemplifying that anything can happen
negatively at the workplace and that you should be prepared for the worse so have a high amount
of grit and resilience already developed to get through these moments. Further implying that
people who have jobs or careers could have the unexpected happen to them causing them to
trigger resilience and find a way to get through the struggle and build off of the struggle so they
know how to shape their life around it and hopefully limit it to never happening again but never
expect the worse as anything can happen at any given moment and shows that anyone of any
background can get these issues and who benefits from developing these traits as it's not just a
poor person but as well as working class or higher individual depending on a person.
Furthermore, others believe that they need grit and resilience to able to live life successfully
because of the passion and motivation they create into completing things at a satisfying effort​.
Jaclyn Stoffel who wrote about grit and resilience for health and educational purposes stated​,
“Grit is defined as perseverance and passion toward long-term goals and describes sustained
commitment toward completing a specific endeavor despite episodes of failure, setbacks, and
adversity...Various definitions for resilience exist, but the term generally refers to one’s ability to
maintain or regain mental health after experiencing adversity. In more simple terms, resilient
individuals exhibit the ability to “bounce back” from stressful and negative emotional
experiences.” Implying that people need grit and resilience to get through any setback no matter
their background or who they are or what they’re known for. Therefore, proving that the two
beliefs are different from one another because resilience isn’t the setting of long term goals it is
the way to bounce back high pressured and overwhelming situations showing how grit and
resilience are different but help each other out as they both stive for some type of motivation in
order to work effectively and how a person’s background doesn’t always determine their
struggles with grit and resilience because anyone can have those struggles because everyone
goes through struggles they may not be able to handle which can cause grit and resilience issues
in overcoming those struggles showing all kinds of people can benefit from these traits and who
benefits from learning how to get past struggles.

However, what purpose does grit and resilience have. After all, a popular belief
exemplifies that lower class kids have less grit and resilience skills especially in school. ​Again
Paul Tough states​,“In recent years, in response to this growing crisis, a new idea (or perhaps a
very old one) has arisen in the education world: Character matters. Researchers concerned with
academic-achievement gaps have begun to study, with increasing interest and enthusiasm, a set
of personal qualities—often referred to as noncognitive skills, or character strengths—that
include resilience, conscientiousness, optimism, self control, and grit. These capacities generally
aren’t captured by our ubiquitous standardized tests, but they seem to make a big difference in
the academic success of children, especially low-income children.” Thus surging the belief that,
that lower income kids have less grit and resilience and teachers and scientists believes it's a
correlation with their background or social classes they come from. It further implies that kids
need grit because it helps people and kids with academic success as it helps the cope with
academic pressure from tons of deadlines and assignments which shows how kids of lower
classes need their grit and resilience in school mainly because the odds are already against them
as their backgrounds correlate their lack of grit and resilience but as well it shows how if kids
don’t these traits in school it won’t correlate to their jobs or their life goals they set to measure
their success. However, other believe that jobs are an extension of where grit and resilience are
needed outside of school. In relation,​ Scott Seibert states​, “Resilience is the capacity to bounce
back from disruptions. In terms of careers, resilience is the capacity to continue making progress
toward your current career goals with the resources and strategies you have already developed; to
Keep Calm and Carry On, as it were. But sometimes events require you to change.” Thus
exemplifying that workplace environments are also a place needed for grit and resilience you
alway need to learn to flexible and adapt your schedule to disruptions and interruptions that get
in your way. Seibert supports the idea that resilience must be needed and managed is because it
helps you make fall backs into success stories as it’s a characteristic to keep pushing yourself so
if you keep pushing yourself in the correct balance it would result in success because you would
have shown your best work and effort possible. However, it is also perceived that resilience isn’t
much in relation to absolute outcome.​ Janetta Harris states​, “For example, these authors describe
how Angela Duckworth studied many different test groups for levels of grittiness as it related to
the predictability of success with consistent accuracy. Over and over again, the grittiest 6
individuals were the most successful, even if they were not the most athletic or intelligent.”
Harris exemplifies that grit and resilience doesn’t mean a person is the smartest or best performer
in any general environment. Thus further exemplifying that grit brings the best results to a person
because even if a person isn’t the smartest or most athletic they will still find satisfaction in their
performance because they’ve tried their best and know they have gave it all they got to get what
they want.

The three points disagree mostly on what people benefit from grit and resilience and why
is it necessary to have or use because of the struggles and obstacles people encounter. I
personally see the issue recycling itself meaning people need to learn what they want in life.
Whether people want a high achievement or low achievement, they need to start pushing
themselves because people need to start thinking about their motivations and interests in life in
what they want to do that is considered successful to them in their situation or life. My opinion
on the controversy is that people need to begin to learn how to use hard work and dedication to
get what they want and not let their struggles or their problems get in their way of their
achievement or think success will find them without any work put in towards it. When people do
not have grit and resilience it leads to no success success which makes people unmotivated and
lead them to think everything is going to be handed to them for their success without any grind
towards their goals.
 Works Cited

Harris, Janetta L., and Bobbie J. Murray. “Educational Grit and Psychological Trauma.”

Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning: Proceedings of the

Annual ABSEL Conference​,

absel-ojs-ttu.tdl.org/absel/index.php/absel/article/view/3075/3060.

Seibert, Scott E., et al. “Developing Career Resilience and Adaptability.” ​Organizational

Dynamics​, vol. 45, no. 3, 2016, pp. 245–257., doi:10.1016/j.orgdyn.2016.07.009.

Stoffel, Jaclyn M., and Jeff Cain. “Review of Grit and Resilience Literature within Health

Professions Education.” ​American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education​, vol. 82, no. 2,

2018, p. 6150., doi:10.5688/ajpe6150.

Tough, Paul. “How Kids Learn Resilience.” ​The Atlantic​, Atlantic Media Company, 19 Mar.

2018, ​www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/how-kids-really-succeed/480744/​.