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A review by thekarpuk
Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America by Paul Tough
4.0
I bought this book on the strength of a piece Paul tough did about the Harlem project "Baby College" played multiple times on This American Life. The piece is incredibly uplifting, discussing a program Geoffrey Canada started in Harlem in an attempt to stop the cycle of poverty and violence. The task was to start out kids as early as possible with the right tools to succeed, teaching parents the techniques upper class parents use to give their children good linguistic and mathematical skills.
What I didn't expect in reading the full book is what a rocky and dramatic journey it actually was. Geoffrey Canada experienced a lot of setbacks and difficulties when he extended Baby College into Promise Academy, an attempt to start an elementary and middle school program to bring Harlem kids up to a level where they could become successful adults.
The book is full of heartbreaking stories, failure, and intelligent analysis all written with equal grace. He devotes a decent amount of time into the history of research on what makes people poor and what keeps them poor, discussing different philosophies. The biggest consensus seems to be that the earlier you can intervene in the lives of the less fortunate, the better.
Which is Canada's goal, to create a conveyer to bring as many children from infancy to successful adulthood as possible.
The quality of the story owes as much to Canada as it does to Paul Tough, as the failures and frustrations are given almost as much time as the successes and high ideals. In an acknowledgement Paul Tough actually highlights one of the lowest days Canada had during the entire period, and how he specifically invited Tough to the school to bear witness. He wanted the journalist to have a complete picture, to write the best, most thorough account possible.
It's odd to see the flipside of "Nurtureshock", where intensely concerned parents are told that their rabid affection may be leading their kids. "Whatever It Takes" concerns the kids who aren't really getting the attention at all. Together they form an interesting dichotomy of educational issues between haves and the havenots.
What's sad is that while most of the educational books I've read geared towards the middle class all focus on making kids better thinkers, happier people, and ultimately smarter adults, Promise Academy is obsessed with test scores and pushing the kids to whatever limits are necessary to get them. It's a sad contrast, between parents being encouraged to give their kids access to the upper limits of their potential and kids being given mammoth amounts of effort and funding just to have access to any kind of adulthood success. It's practically two different worlds of standards. The books for middle class kids seem to see test scores as irrelevant, as something that will fall in line naturally if a child is allowed to explore their world.
Everything about "Whatever it Takes" is well organized, presented with care, and it's one of the better books I've read on the topic of education.
What I didn't expect in reading the full book is what a rocky and dramatic journey it actually was. Geoffrey Canada experienced a lot of setbacks and difficulties when he extended Baby College into Promise Academy, an attempt to start an elementary and middle school program to bring Harlem kids up to a level where they could become successful adults.
The book is full of heartbreaking stories, failure, and intelligent analysis all written with equal grace. He devotes a decent amount of time into the history of research on what makes people poor and what keeps them poor, discussing different philosophies. The biggest consensus seems to be that the earlier you can intervene in the lives of the less fortunate, the better.
Which is Canada's goal, to create a conveyer to bring as many children from infancy to successful adulthood as possible.
The quality of the story owes as much to Canada as it does to Paul Tough, as the failures and frustrations are given almost as much time as the successes and high ideals. In an acknowledgement Paul Tough actually highlights one of the lowest days Canada had during the entire period, and how he specifically invited Tough to the school to bear witness. He wanted the journalist to have a complete picture, to write the best, most thorough account possible.
It's odd to see the flipside of "Nurtureshock", where intensely concerned parents are told that their rabid affection may be leading their kids. "Whatever It Takes" concerns the kids who aren't really getting the attention at all. Together they form an interesting dichotomy of educational issues between haves and the havenots.
What's sad is that while most of the educational books I've read geared towards the middle class all focus on making kids better thinkers, happier people, and ultimately smarter adults, Promise Academy is obsessed with test scores and pushing the kids to whatever limits are necessary to get them. It's a sad contrast, between parents being encouraged to give their kids access to the upper limits of their potential and kids being given mammoth amounts of effort and funding just to have access to any kind of adulthood success. It's practically two different worlds of standards. The books for middle class kids seem to see test scores as irrelevant, as something that will fall in line naturally if a child is allowed to explore their world.
Everything about "Whatever it Takes" is well organized, presented with care, and it's one of the better books I've read on the topic of education.