Malcolm Gladwell, Fleetwood Mac and Never Giving Up

In his keynote speech at the National Education Technology Conference, Malcolm Gladwell spoke to his audience about the importance of hard work by using an illustration of the band Fleetwood Mac. Although they are now well known and have enjoyed a large amount of success in the music industry, the band put out 16 albums before they received any sort of noticable attention. Although the group was obviously talented, they still had to put in years of hard work before they attained the success they now have. Gladwell also talked about how the Beatles, despite their natural ability, worked incredibly long hours to hone their skills before they broke into the mainstream music scene. These examples were used to introduce Gladwell's main theme: that time and hard work are always necessary to become proficient at anything valuable. Gladwell also informed his audience that it ususally takes at least 10,000 hours of practicing a skill before you become an expert in that field. Essentially, you have to put in around 10 years of work before you completely master something. Nearly everyone who is famous for being good at something, from Beethoven to the Beatles, has put in this large amout of time before they reach any level of success.
So how does this relate to education? Pretty directly, as it turns out. Gladwell revealed to his audience that higher level math skills are directly related to how long a student is willing to sit down, focus, and really try to complete a seemingly endless task. In other words, nearly every measurement of academic performance is really a measurement of a student's ability to work hard at something. This means that, at least as far as academics are concerned, natural ability means very little when compared to hard work. In my own educational experience I have often used the excuse "I can't do math, I'm an English major" in order to explain my abysmal math skills. However, according to Gladwell, me and all of the other poor math students aren't suffering from a lack of skill but rather a lack of motivation.
In my opinion, what needs to come next is a shift in attitude about academic performance and hard work in general. Maybe teachers could cut back on praising students for producing perfect work and begin offering more accolades for trying, failing and trying again. If hard work is really the biggest factor in determining academic success, then it becomes pretty clear that teaching the value of hard work is what teachers should be focusing on. While I understand that students needs to be rewarded for being good at something, I also want to praise them for not being so good and still persevering.