Primer on Success: Character and Knowledge Make the Difference

Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and Hidden Power of By Paul Tough Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012, $27; 256 pages. As reviewed by E. D. Hirsch Jr. Paul Tough follows his excellent book about Geoffrey Canada and Harlem Children's Zone with one on improving school achievement and life chances of disadvantaged children. The title is Children Succeed, and chapter heads continue how-to motif of title: 1. to Fail (and Not To). 2. to Build Character. 3. to Think. 4. to Succeed. 5. A Better Path. If book really delivered on these headings, Tough would deserve immense success. I hope book does sell well, though perhaps not too well. Its ultimate message is that non-cognitive abilities and traits are more important to success than mere academic achievement, and that message, while containing important truths, is overstated. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Tough gathers scientific results and personal observations from a number of estimable sources among researchers and practitioners, all supporting idea that what really determines success is character and perseverance rather than raw intelligence and book learning. At same time, he shows that what truly handicaps a child is horrible early upbringing and neglect. The term of art for permanent psychic damage done is ACE: Adverse Childhood Experiences. This, by now well-attested finding is best argument for intrusion of outsiders into homes of neglectful or cruel caregivers, and it is best explanation for observation that poverty accompanies lower achievement all over world. This poverty argument (it's not Tough's) is also oversimplified, since, as PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) reports show, some parts of world diminish poverty-achievement correlation far more than U.S., through better schooling. What connects ACE segment of book (How to Fail) with more positive themes is common non-cognitive feature. How to Build Character takes off from successful KIPP schools and their emphasis on good manners and perseverance. The chapter goes on to show that a certain kind of test requiring no academic knowledge, only a willingness to persist in a boring task, is, other things equal, highly predictive of later success. How to Think focuses on middle-school chess players from a low-income school manage consistently to beat advantaged students and even highschool chess teams. Focus and practice are keys. In other words, perseverance and hard work are how to think. And How to Succeed? Also perseverance and hard work. No one would or should dispute importance of diligence and perseverance. Classic texts on education such as Plato's Republic and Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education emphasize that character development and virtue are far more important educational goals than mere acquisition of knowledge. At same time, those writers are quite explicit in setting forth breadth of knowledge children need to acquire. If Tough had updated that both/and tradition with latest reports from field, he would have no argument from me. But he takes view that an emphasis on knowledge acquisition, which he calls the cognitive hypothesis, has been tried and it has failed. Here is what he has to say in his introduction: In past decade, and especially in past few years, a disparate congregation of economists, educators, psychologists and neuroscientists have begun to produce evidence that call into question many of assumptions behind cognitive hypothesis. What matters most in a child's development, they say, is not much information we can stuff into her brain in first few years. What matters instead is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence. …

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