"What traits help a child learn and excel?"
Parents and teachers have been asking this question for generations, and over the course of generations, the answers have been refined. To intellectual intelligence has been added the concept of emotional intelligence, particularly with regard to will power. Even in creative achievement, hard work and persistence prevail. In the marshmallow test Walter Mischel and colleagues identified children who resisted the temptation to eat one marshmallow immediately when they are promised more marshmallows at a later time (on condition that they resisted eating one now). Results showed that the children capable of exercising willpower were higher achievers. This experiment has become a staple not only of educational psychologists but also of politicians seeking to improve capabilities of the population. Malcolm Gladwell, drawing in large part on the stunning work of Carol Dweck, argues in his book Outliers that it is hours of application not talent that yield results, and that praise should be directed at a child's effort rather than innate ability. The praise that encourages children should be used to shape their appreciation of the importance of effort, for it is effort that leads to achievement. This new model is illuminating, but it leaves some important traits in the shade.
Hard work does have an enormous impact on achievement, but hard work requires a very special engine. Achievement is built on discipline, but discipline is built on delight in the exhausting processes of learning. There's a pulsing excitement, a fierce determination, a focus that floods one's attention. This drive, partly anticipation, partly curiosity can be called "mind hunger."
The tenor Jay Hunter Morris spoke about the long hours he put in to learn the demanding (some would say impossible) role of Siegfried. He had put in those long hours of learning and honing technique and increasing stamina without any expectation of actually singing the role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, which he did for the first time this autumn. What had kept him going was the pleasure in the process, the delight in practicing, and the buzz of getting better at something. This intellectual engagement is not only conscientiousness (where induction by praise would be important). It is not only ability. It is also a function of a hungry mind finding delight in exhausting self criticism and incremental improvement.
In a paper published last month in Perspectives on Psychological Science (http://pps.sagepub.com/content/6/6/574) Sophie van Stumm, Benedikt Hall and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic showed that curiosity - what the authors call "The Hungry Mind" - equalled conscientiousness (which includes will power) in academic performance. Mind-hunger is not a passive trait. A hungry mind pursues more than knowledge of facts. A hungry mind tests the limits of what one can do. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity." But most children are born with mind hunger; what they need is to learn how to keep hold of it. Children often sustain mind hunger through the stimulation and pleasure provided by people around them, people with whom they develop close relationships and whose delight and interest they share. This may be one reason children in chaotic or neglectful family environments are slower to learn. Such disadvantaged children may crave peace and quiet, or noisy distraction, rather than those exquisite learning pleasures that involve tension and concentration.
Eleanor Roosevelt was surely speaking intuitively of what has now been shown under more controlled conditions. But the hungry mind is more than curiosity, and "hunger" is an imperfect metaphor. After all, in mind hunger, consumption does not lead to satiation; it generates energy for further pursuit and achievement. The hunger is like the eagerness we might have in listening to a complex musical piece where our expectations of what's to come are constantly being revised (however familiar the music is). We keep making new sense of what is before us, and when it's over, we're likely to think, "That was lovely, I want to hear it again, and understand it more," rather than "I've had it and now I'm full." The hungry mind is a mind actively searching and seeking, and finding joy in such activity.
Bringing the hungry mind into the model of children's achievement helps parents and teachers extend their approaches to encouragement and achievement. Children need far more than discipline; they need more than the ability to defer gratification. They need to experience the sheer pleasure of intellectual engagement.
