Self-Discipline and Schools

A recent study finds that self-discipline beats IQ as a predictor of success in schools. Since being smart is actually a hardship in schools, that's hardly surprising. Bright kids find it so easy to skate through on native intelligence that they have no motive to develope self-discipline to succeed in school. For parents to teach discipline often means discipline outside of an academic context. As a result bright kids in college either push themselves and self-teach good study habits, or they a) reproduce skating by or b) end up leaving school.

If schools challeneged bright kids, and gave them the kind of assignments that they actually had to apply themselves to do well on, then they would benefit from smarts and discipline. As it is, we largely ignore the needs of our gifted kids and assume they'll just do fine. Learn they will, no doubt, but they will not on their own cultivate then habits of hard work and success.