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Published Sep 2012
256 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
Why do some children succeed while others fail?
The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about intelligence: Success comes to those who score highest on tests, from preschool admissions to SATs.
But in How Children Succeed, Paul Tough argues for a very different understanding of what makes a successful child. Drawing on groundbreaking research in neuroscience, economics, and psychology, Tough shows that the qualities that matter most have less to do with IQ and more to do with character: skills like grit, curiosity, conscientiousness, and optimism.
How Children Succeed introduces us to a new generation of scientists and educators who are radically changing our understanding of how children develop character, how they learn to think, and how they overcome adversity. It tells the personal stories of young people struggling to stay on the right side of the line between success and failure. And it argues for a new way of thinking about how best to steer an individual child – or a whole generation of children – toward a successful future.
This provocative and profoundly hopeful book will not only inspire and engage readers; it will also change our understanding of childhood itself.
"Starred Review. Well-written and bursting with ideas, this will be essential reading for anyone who cares about childhood in America. " - Kirkus Reviews
"I wish I could take this compact, powerful, clear-eyed, beautifully written book and put it in the hands of every parent, teacher and politician. At its core is a notion that is electrifying in its originality and its optimism: that character - not cognition - is central to success, and that character can be taught.?How Children Succeed?will change the way you think about children. But more than that: it will fill you with a sense of what could be." - Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here
"'This American Life' contributor Tough (Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America) tackles new theories on childhood education with a compelling style that weaves in personal details about his own child and childhood." - Publishers Weekly
This information about How Children Succeed was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Paul Tough is the author of Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America.. He has written extensively about education, child development, poverty, and politics, including cover stories in the New York Times Magazine on character education, the achievement gap, and the Harlem Children's Zone. He has worked as an editor at the New York Times Magazine and Harper's Magazine and as a reporter and producer for the public-radio program "This American Life." He was the founding editor of Open Letters, an online magazine. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Slate, GQ, Esquire, and Geist, and on the op-ed page of the New York Times. He lives with his wife and son in New York.
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