Tag: excellence
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Educating for Humility: Promoting a Classroom Culture of Excellence in Service to Others
Of the many ills that plague modern society, perhaps one of the most insidious is the wedge we have driven between character and excellence, or ethics and achievement. Contemporary examples abound of “successful” men and women who have earned impressive accolades despite deep recesses in character, and occasionally, because of those recesses. As a result,…
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Handwork: Fostering Excellence Through the Habit of Creating
Guest post by Joleen Steel, Classical Christian Educator and Director of Camping Stick Kids We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. Aristotle What do you find yourself repeatedly doing? In this digital world, it is easy to immerse ourselves in the repetition of scrolling through social media…
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Excellence Comes by Habit: Aristotle on Moral Virtue
All too often we are inclined to think of excellence as the product of good genes and good fortune rather than our personal habits. The fates bestow their blessings indiscriminately and haphazardly, and the talented and successful are the lucky recipients of excellence, while the rest of us are mired in mediocrity. Those who rise…
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Aristotle and the Growth Mindset
Whether you’ve been involved in the world of education, sports, self-help or business, it’s likely that you’ve heard of Carol Dweck’s growth mindset. A Stanford University psychologist, Carol Dweck popularized her findings about how much success in any endeavor depends on a person’s mindset. In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, she explains…
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Deliberate Practice: How to Pursue Excellence
Deliberate practice can be the difference between average and expert performance. Anders Ericsson is one of several scholars who have contributed to our knowledge of optimal performance. He proposes that the chief indicator of future success is not innate ability, such as IQ, but the quality of practice. “Experts are made, not born.” (Ericsson, “The…