I’m partway through Paul Tough’s new book, How Children Succeed. In his first book, Whatever It Takes, most readers focused on Tough’s portrayal of the Harlem Children’s Zone. What I noticed as an historian of education was his intellectual history of the culture-of-poverty arguments–a nice long chunk I would like most graduate students in the area to read (whether or not they agree with his take). In this new book, he doesn’t have a chunk of text devoted to the relevant educational psychology literature but mixes that discussion into his description of attempts at intervening in children’s lives to encourage grit, conscientiousness, and other traits Tough describes roughly as the new character profile.
I will have more to say (including some areas of criticism) when I am done, but I can say it is interesting and worthwhile to read.