How Children Succeed Part one

How Children Succeed Part one Improving Academic Performance This is the first of a three-part introduction to Paul Toughs insightful book,How Children Succeed: Grit,Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. The ultra-concise executive summary and key takeaway is that children do notsucceed academicallybecause of their innate intelligence, as is commonly assumed. Instead, Tough shares reams of researchwhich suggests character traits like curiosity, grit, and the ability topersevere may be more important to long term academic success, and particularly success in college and life beyond college, than cognitiveskills like mathematics, logic, and reading comprehension. The rest of this three-part article willintroduce the author, explain the structure of the book, provide anoverview of the book's introductorychapter, and offer a brief analysis/review of the book. Let’s start by providing some details on the author. Tough is a journalist with a specific interest in education, child development, and poverty in America.He's written cover stories for the New York Times Magazine, and his writing has also appeared in Slate,GQ, and Esquire. It's interesting to note that you don't find out until the final chapter that Tough himself was admitted to Columbia University, but ultimately dropped out before earning a college degree. Inthat final chapter, Tough ponders whether he lacks some of the critical character traits he describes inthe book. Structure of the Book The book has five chapters, each of which is organized numerically around specific people or situationsthat help make the key points. These chapters are: A.How to Fail (and How Not To) â€" talks about the impact of family life on early academic successand foundationalexecutive functioningskills that enable a child to learn at school B.How to Build Characterâ€"defines different types of character traits and various strategies forbuilding them C.How to Thinkâ€"describes how thinking in one particular way is much more likely to lead toacademic and other types of success D.How to Succeedâ€"uses case studies to describe how people in various extremely difficult circumstances have found ways to succeed academically E.A Better Pathâ€"offers ideas for implementing some of the book's key ideas at a national policylevel to improve academic outcomes for society'smost at-risk children Summary of the Introduction The introductory chapter describes a scene at a unique early childhoodeducation center, as well asresearch being done by an economics professor at the University of Chicago, to reveal the book's maintheme: that academic success, and success in life in general, is influenced more byperformancecharacterskills like curiosity, grit, and determination than by IQ or cognitive skills like math, logic, andreading comprehension. The difference betweenperformanceandmoralcharacter attributes is defined in chapter 2. Tough starts by noting that he has a two-year old son named Elliot.He returns at various points in thebook to his son, and how he plans on implementing some of the book's ideas in his son's life. I found thisfeature of the narrative compelling. He describes a scene at a unique kindergarten that is trying out a new early education strategy calledTools of the Mind. Unlike most Kindergarten environments, which focus onpre-academiccognitiveskills like writing, reading, and counting, schools following the Tools of the Mind model focus onteaching a different set ofself-regulatoryskills related to controlling impulses, staying focused on thetask at hand, planning ahead, organizing your thoughts, and managing your emotions. Although the following point is not actually explicitly made in the book,once can reasonably infer the the creators ofTools of the Mind believe that for very young children, focusing first on building thenon-cognitiveskills necessary to fully engage and focus on learning academic skills will lead to stronger academic skillsin the long run because you will bebetter at learning. Tough does go into a bit of detail on the strategies, tips, andtricks that Tools of the Mind uses to help itsyoung students learn these self-regulatory skills. These include: private speech (i.e., talking to yourselfwhile you do a difficult task), writing out play plansto figure out in advance the fun things you aregoing to do today, anddramatic playwhich teaches kids to follow directions as they follow the rules ofthe game and regulate their impulses. The approach to early education, Tough notes, is fundamentallyunique in American today, because it doesn't embrace what Tough calls thecognitive hypothesis. The cognitive hypotheses states that success today depends primarily on cognitive skills (e.g., reading,writing, recognizing patterns, calculating, etc.) the type of intelligence that gets tested on IQ orstandardized tests, and that the best way to build these skills is to practice them as early and often aspossible. In part two of our summary ofHow Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power ofCharacter we'll explore the cognitive hypothesis, one of the major themes of the book, in more detail.