Symphony Question: Does hard work matter more than natural talent?
After last year’s successful Young People’s General Election, we’ve started asking students at our member schools around the UK questions every week.
These are our Symphony Questions, and we have the results from Week 7!
This week, we asked the same question of both primary and secondary school students to get their thoughts on what might be the most important quality to reach success.
Question: Which do you think matters more: talent or hard work?
Result: Hard Work!
Involving about 1,000 students from around the UK, the overwhelming majority of students said ‘hard work’. 94% of students think that working hard is more important than talent, with only 6% saying ‘talent’ is the more important quality.
This may be the vote with the largest margin that we’ve had so far, with an almost unanimous vote from participating students that how hard a person works matters more than their natural ability.
Such a strong response from these young people shows a clear feeling that there is something more to success than simply being naturally good at something. They certainly seem to believe that if you want to achieve something, it is better to have a strong work ethic than to simply be naturally talented.
We can clearly see that today’s young people place a lot of value on hard work. This is certainly a positive result, and can make us feel optimistic about the fact that the future is in the hands of a generation that is willing to work hard to achieve their goals.
Next week’s Symphony Question:
International Women’s Day is 8 March. Do you think being born a boy or a girl will affect the kind of job you have when you grow up?
Our New Year’s Resolution to our membership is to help them come up with relevant, engaging and thoughtful questions to help get all pupils having their say. Schools usually come up with their own meetings, but we’re giving them additional questions if they’d like them.
Following the successful trial of this form in our General Election Question Series, for 2020 we’ll be recommending a blend of action-led & topical questions to ask each week.
Want to get involved or suggest a question? Send us an email at membership@smartschoolcouncils.org.uk