How Children Succeed

How Children Succeed by Paul Tough - a review

In posts published so far I have talked about topics which elucidate social and economic problems all over the world. My thesis is that all these problem areas can be traced historically to a philosophy or philosophies which promise a better world if only we follow the tenants of these philosophies.

In the book “How Children Succeed” by Paul tough he gives a good overview in Chapter 5, A Better Path, of the history of trends which promise reform in economics, education, the work place, welfare and poverty that have been going on in American society for decades, but in spite of Herculean efforts to eradicate severe problems in our culture, they none-the-less persist and even worsen.

Mr. Tough, while lamenting his dropping out of Columbia University in his freshman year, with many researchers concluding dropping out of school, either high school or college, is due to low determination, low perseverance and bad planning skills, Tough agrees to some extent; but he also came to realize that dropping out leads to something more positive. Whatever reasons there may be for dropping out, it provides a way of dealing with failure by overcoming adversity which in turn develops character, involving toughness, perseverance and planning. 

Dealing with failure becomes in this overview the major character developing tool Tough describes. The author describes the many failures of Steve Jobs who invented the Apple Computer; each failure became an opportunity for Jobs to grow stronger as a person and as a genius in computer technology.

At this point the author starts thinking about his son and how he could help his son to succeed.  He came to believe that modern scientific research of the brain required that his child be given a wholesome environment of nurturing to ensure that his child not endure undue trauma and stress. Flash cards  and music videos were not needed to develop traits necessary for success, Science revealed to him that his child would simply in his younger years develop these traits on his own.

When his son had a tantrum he needed to to calm himself and calm the child, thereby teaching the child to deal correctly with a dramatic situation. Hugging, talking, reassuring were needed in the early years to help his son deal with a world of scary things. As his son grew older, hugging and reassurance had to be replaced with rules and discipline, handled in a loving way. But he realized also that providing everything for his child and protecting him from everything would not allow the child to learn to deal with new circumstances and learn from them through failures and successes. 

Applying these ideas to others, Tough found that many students completing their schooling with high academic achievement, were lost in the world outside because they had not been given the opportunity to learn from a recognition of their weaknesses and their failures. Their character had not been formed sufficiently or at all.

Graduates going back into areas of poverty lacking these character skills might end up engaging in criminal activities.  Society and government are seen to have responsibility to see that this does not happen. National polls(1) show that people believe it’s the government’s responsibility. “The government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep”. “It is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves”. “Our society should do what is necessary to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed”.

Tough sees that the national conversation on eliminating poverty has diminished in recent years. Even though we have a president who was elected on the promise of solving the poverty issue, this has not happened. For example, there are more in poverty now than in 1966 where the poverty stood at 17% while now the figure is 22%. The war on poverty of the 60s accomplished little.

The author realizes the poverty debate has merged with the education debate.  There were those who, through the use of the bell curve, believed one could predict that students who were successful in high school and college would be successful in life and this seemed to be borne out. The passage of the No Child left behind law in 2001 forced statistics to be gathered on all groups of students so that corrections could be made within the educational system to limit gaps between rich and poor. But these gaps became even worse. Other kinds of schools were able to raise the educational scores of low income students through targeted education. It was eventually thought that better education would provide a means of eliminating poverty. This led to a belief that quality teachers were needed to accomplish this. But trying to incentivize teachers with extra pay and eliminating poor teachers through firing did not sit well with the educational unions.

But educational reforms have not been able to accomplish much with the truly poverty-stricken and disadvantaged students; all manners of agencies and departments of the government are not adequately staffed with personnel who can handle all the difficult problems. Many reformers nonetheless feel that these problems can be resolved within the school while critics point out that economics and other factors outside of the school make it impossible for the problem of poverty to be resolved within the school alone. Mothers on welfare trying to raise a family of several children have extraordinary difficulties which so far have not been adequately addressed. Communities of these severely disadvantaged people have need of an agency that provides a relationship of caring about the problems they face.

The science of the disadvantaged shows the reality that character strengths are not innate. They are somehow implanted in the person in some external way. There are some who nonetheless think that money can somehow solve the problem by improving the external environment. However, young people who have made it into the world outside successfully have done so because someone helped them in taking the first step.

In this overview of government being the sole agent of reform, major societal problems persist.  Something has been lost.  The history of that loss will be the subject of my next post: Modernism.

Notes:
(1) Tough Chapter 5 A better Path, Section 3 A Different Challenge, p185 of 197 Pew Research Center, Survey of Attitudes