Paul Tough

I didn't learn much from this, having already read/heard about both Dweck and Duckworth's research fairly extensively. There were a few interesting case studies, but the chess section was pretty uninteresting, and the behavior of the chess teacher and her justification for why it's ok for so many smart people to squander so much time and attention on chess when there are so many pressing problems in the world was completely unpalatable to me. (Note: playing for fun and enjoying analyzing games or even playing in tournaments as a side interest seems totally fine to me. Devoting your whole life to it and never tapping in to your potential to do real good in the world doesn't.)… (altro)

3.5 stars

Tough writes about George Canada, a former teacher who wants to transform residents of the Harlem neighborhood into middle-class Americans. He tries to do this with his nonprofit Harlem Children's Zone, offering social service-type help at various life stages, trying to connect the programs as much as possible.

While the author clearly respects and admires Canada, he seemed to me to be controlling, arrogant, and impatient. I wasn't impressed at all with the way he treated his staff or students.

Canada has a clear savior mentality and refuses to acknowledge that individuals have any control over their own situations (for example, that his teenage students have a responsibility to study in order to learn), which ultimately is disempowering, not helpful.

His dream that everyone enter the middle-class via college seemed so narrow and ignorant to me. His idea of success just isn't the same as mine, I guess.

Most of the book focuses on Promise Academy, the charter school Canada starts. His solution to poor public school performance is a lot of extra classroom time (10-12 hours a day, M-F, plus a few hours on Saturdays, which is far longer than full time jobs for adults!), and teaching to the test so that kids can "succeed" within the system. This method is incredibly soul-sucking and is a reason why I love homeschooling so much. (Less time in a classroom, more time in the 'real' world is closer to my educational philosophy.)

"Baby college," a nine-week parenting class, was a good idea. Like many people running large operations, though, Canada and his team seemed to have sketchy ideas on appropriate budgeting… I didn't get the impression that the results they saw really justified the high cost of the program.

I would have liked to hear more about the other HCZ programs, and I'd be curious to see any new stats since this book was published 12 years ago. Have these programs realized any significant results?

This was an interesting and thought provoking read mostly because I disagreed with Canada on so many things!… (altro)

Paul Tough gets real about higher education in the US.

I found this book fascinating. Paul Tough's signature interlinking of academic study findings with journalism's personal stories really works for me. A lot of what he calls out as indisputable findings here are results that I had understood to still be in question (like that top tier institutions really do do much better for their graduates than their high-mid-tier competitors -- take that, Jay Mathews! -- and that the kids who are advantaged by standardized tests tend to be whiter, richer, more male, and less likely to do well in college than the equal sized group of kids who are disadvantaged by their test scores). Lots of chew on here; I'll be recommending it to all my educator friends and anyone else interested in social mobility and in education.… (altro)