LARGE

I feel like Jerry Larges ideas could do a lot to improve our school system. He talks about building a student’s "grit" or character as a means to better prepare them for success. A student must be allowed to fail but not forced to in order to develop their grit. Large states "A big part of building character is overcoming failure. Too much adversity is bad, but so is too little, which doesn't allow a child to build grit." he goes on to say "Grit is one of the characteristics of successful people...the others: self-control, zest, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity." his views have already been seen to work when put into practice at KIPP Academy. KIPP is a middle school that was started in the south Bronx. KIPP has been praised and highly regarded do to its raising the academic achievements of it’s under privileged student body making them among the top scorers in all of New York City. Despite this success at KIPP students showed a pattern of sliding backward in high school and often failing to graduate college. It was determined that the problem was their students character was being enforced from the outside by rules and rigorous structure, thus the students would fail later when these rules and structures were removed. Now KIPP remodeled its method to build the "grit" characteristics into each student rather than enforce them from the outside. Students, who are taught to possess the character traits of success within them, will not falter when the world around them is no longer enforcing those qualities.