This NPR radio spot confirms much of what we already know about struggle. There’s so much good stuff in this report, I’d encourage you to go listen to it or read it. Here are a couple nuggets I found particularly illuminating (emphasis mine).

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For example, Stigler says, in the Japanese classrooms that he’s studied, teachers consciously design tasks that are slightly beyond the capabilities of the students they teach, so the students can actually experience struggling with something just outside their reach. Then, once the task is mastered, the teachers actively point out that the student was able to accomplish it through hard work and struggle.

“And I just think that especially in schools, we don’t create enough of those experiences, and then we don’t point them out clearly enough.”

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“We did a study many years ago with first-grade students,” he tells me. “We decided to…