Postcolonial scholarship has been primarily concerned with cultural translation,that is, translation understood guratively as movement between cultures, and has had less regard forlanguage issues, while translation studies has emphasized the complexity of translation as a linguisticpractice that involves intercultural mediation.

Susan Bassnett

Vineeta Sinha

Syed Farid Alatas

the concept isn’t just philosophically conservative in its premises but alsopolitically conservative in its consequences

Grit issometimes sold as a tool to accomplish whatever goals one chooses, but in practice the focus is ontraining children to accomplish the goals imposed on them by adult

If enjoying a complex mentallife interferes with performance in a one shot contest to see who can spell more obscure words correctly,is that really an argument for grit?

persistent students get higher grades, that may not make a case for grit so much as a case against usinggrades as a marker for success

n one study conducted by Duckworth and her colleagues, freshman cadets at West Pointwho scored high on a grit questionnaire (“I finish whatever I begin”) were less likely to quit during thegrueling summer training program. But what does this prove other than that people who are persistent . .. persist?

Proponents of grit rarely ask: Do kids love what they’re doing?Or are they driven by a desperate (and anxiety provoking) need to prove their competence? As long asthey’re pushing themselves, we’re encouraged to nod our approval.

Gritty people sometimes exhibit what psychologists call “nonproductive persistence

To begin with, not everything is worth doing, let alone doing for extended periods, and not everyone whoworks hard is pursuing something worthwhile. People who are up to no good often have grit to spare.Persistence is just one of many attributes that can sometimes be useful for reaching a (good or bad)outcome, so it’s the choice of goal that ought to come first and count more

Yet ironically, the heart of what’s being disseminated is a notion drummed into us by Aesop’s fables,Benjamin Franklin’s aphorisms, Christian denunciations of sloth, and the 19th century chant invented to

“Grit” — defined by its most prominent proponent, AngelaDuckworth, as “the tendency to sustain perseverance and passion for challenging long term goals” — hasbeen greeted with a degree of breathless enthusiasm unmatched since — well, since the last socialscience craze

. It’s self control and grit that occupy Tough formuch of the book

Emblematic of this shift is Paul Tough’s recent bestseller How Children Succeed

it’s usually in the context of a conservative narrative that features not altruism orempathy but something that sounds very much like the Protestant work ethic

Cognitive ability isn’t the only factor that determines how children will fare in school, let alone in life.Drawing on a substantial body of research, science writer Dan Goleman reminded us of that fact almosttwenty years ago in his book Emotional Intelligence

This is an expanded version of the published article, which appeared in the Post‘s Sunday “Outlook”section. It has been adapted from chapter 7 of The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging theConventional Wisdom about Children and Parenting.

Alfie Kohn

The Downside of “Grit”What Really Happens When Kids Are Pushed to Be More Persistent?

WASHINGTON POSTApril 6, 2014

Pedro Noguera is a professor of education at NYU and the director of the Metropolitan Center forUrban Education. Anindya Kundu, a doctoral student in Education at NYU, contributed to thiscolumn.

Unlike grit, agency is about empowering young people to use education to take control of their lives.As they come to understand that knowledge is a source of power, students become more invested aslearners and more able to see the relevance of school in shaping their future outcomes.

Rather than focusing on grit, it might be far wiser to focus on the concept of agency

This is why it is important to acknowledge education as both anindividual and collective concern.

The costs of allowing so many Americans to remain under-educated are daunting. Education should beconsidered an investment in a country’s labor force, where underachievement harms economic growth.Almost five years ago, a McKinsey study showed that if America could narrow its achievement gapbetween white students and black and Latino students, G.D.P. would be between $310 billion to $525billion higher, or roughly 4% of total G.D.P.

poorest neighborhoods only 10% of high school seniors graduated from high school college-ready. Inthe wealthiest neighborhoods the vast majority of students were college-ready

opportunity gap

achievement gap

Teachers encouraged him to apply to college without knowing that Miguel wasundocumented and in the country illegally. All the grit in the world would not make it possible for himto get the financial aid he needed to pay for his college education.

Clearly, these accomplishments suggest that Miguel possessed more than his share of grit; heepitomizes what can be achieved through sacrifice and determination.

Angela Lee Duckworth hasconvincingly argued that grit is a measurable trait that predicts student achievement.

Why Students Need More than 'Grit'

But an overemphasis on grit directs attention away from other factors that also affect student success.

our nation’s

Feb. 27, 2014, 2:55 PM PST / Updated March 2, 2014, 6:10 AM PST

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/my-brothers-keeper-education-msna276431

Without such deep, attentive listening, anycritique you make wtll be superficial and dectdedly uncritica l.It will be a critique that says more about you than about thewriter or idea you're supposedly responding to

We hope it is clear that critical reading is a two-way street.It is just as much about being open to the way that writerscan challenge you, maybe even transform you, as it is aboutquestioning those writers.

Therefore,when you translate, do not try to fit the ideas of such writersinto your preexisting beliefs, but instead allow your own vtewsto be challenged

But readers who break down this passage into its essentialparts will find that it is actually a lucid piece of writing thatconforms to the classic "they say/ I say'' pattern.

Sometimes it is difficult to figure out the views th at writersare respondmg co not because these writers do not identify18 2Readmg for the Conversationthose views but because their language and the concepts theyare dealing with are particularly challenging.

Constructing this counter-argument can also help you recognize how Draut challengesyour own views, questioning opinions that you previously tookfor granted

other writers assumethat their readers are so famili<~r with these views that they neednot name or summarize them. ln such cases, you the readerhave to reconstruct the unstated "they say" that is motivatingthe text through a process of inference

The assumption these students are mak-ing is that if something appears on the page, the author mustendorse it.

It asks that you determine not only what theauthor chinks, but how what the author thinks fits with wharothers think, and ultimately with what you yourself think

Since they were now dealing not with one argumentbut at least two (the author's argument and the one[s] he orshe was responding to), they now had alternative ways of see-ing the topic at hand.

The results were often striking. The discussionsthat followed tended to be far livelier and to draw in a greaternumber of students. We were still asking students to look fo{the main argument, bur we were now asking them to see thatargument as a response to some other argument that provokedit, gave it a reason for being, and helped all of us see why weshould care about it.

now that we had determined what the author was saying, whatdid we ourselves have ro say?

"W HAT IS THE AUTHOR's ARGUMENT? What is he or shetrying to say?" For many years, these were the first questions wewould ask our classes in a discussion of an assigned reading. Thediscussion that resulted was often halting

WHAT'S MOTIVATING THIS WRITER?Reading for the Conversation