Is it better to be smart or disciplined?

There must be something in the water up there in Canada that turns conservative journalists into humorous, intelligent, writing machines. Or maybe it is just that they work really hard at it. Denyse O’Leary is joining Mark Steyn as one of our very favorite writers. She is prolific, funny, and a grandma to boot. I do not know how she finds all the stuff she finds, but it is interesting and written with such good humor that it is sometimes hard to tell that she is at war with the materialist left. Mindful Hack and Post-Darwinist are two of her blogs that we read. She is also a contributor at Uncommon Descent and she writes books.

I think she wrote this recent post on Mindful Hack with our little family in mind. We work very hard, sometimes successfully, at avoiding some of the pitfalls common to many homeschoolers. Some of us tend to believe our children are smarter than other children, but we think it is OK to believe that because we are so humble about it. It turns out that ability to perform well on those things that measure academic success are probably more attributable to hard work than to raw intelligence. Grandma was right all along, smart may help, but hard work and discipline are essential.