Is success defined by the grades you get in school? Dominic Randolph, the headmaster of the prestigious private school, Riverdale Country School, doesn’t think so. According to him, too much attention is put on grades and not enough on character. “There was this idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful,” says Randolph.
As an artistic response, designer Stephen Doyle of Doyle Partners produced these amazing anamorphic tape installations of character traits at two New York City schools for the article What if the Secret to Success is Failure? in The New York Times Magazine.
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“As Levin watched the progress of those KIPP alumni, he noticed something curious: the students who persisted in college were not necessarily the ones who had excelled academically at KIPP; they were the ones with exceptional character strengths, like optimism and persistence and social intelligence. They were the ones who were able to recover from a bad grade and resolve to do better next time; to bounce back from a fight with their parents; to resist the urge to go out to the movies and stay home and study instead; to persuade professors to give them extra help after class. Those skills weren’t enough on their own to earn students a B.A., Levin knew. But for young people without the benefit of a lot of family resources, without the kind of safety net that their wealthier peers enjoyed, they seemed an indispensable part of making it to graduation day.”
