Paul Tough

Why character, confidence, and curiosity are more important to your child's success than academic results. The New York Times bestseller. For all fans of Oliver James or Steve Biddulph's Raising Boys, Raising Girls, and The Complete Secrets of Happy Children. In a world where academic success can seem all-important in deciding our children's success in adult life, Paul Tough sees things very differently. Instead of fixating on grades and exams, he argues that we, as parents, should be paying more attention to our children's characters. Inner resilience, a sense of curiosity, the hidden power of confidence - these are the most important things we can teach our children, because it is these qualities that will enable them to live happy, fulfilled and successful lives. In this personal, thought-provoking and timely book, Paul Tough offers a clarion call to parents who are seeking to unlock their child's true potential - and ensure they really succeed.

Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character

How Children Succeed

Challenges conventional views about standardized testing to argue that success is more determined by self-discipline, and describes the work of pioneering researchers and educators who have enabled effective new teaching methods.

Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character

Kathy Jedrzejczyk

Being a teacher who works at a high poverty school, this book was very insightful for me. The author really makes clear and confirms many of the things that we (as teachers in these schools) already kind of know, but haven't quite been able to articulate. It supports the ideas that character are extremely important for college success and that living in high risk environments pretty much eliminates the possibility to develop these skills. 

Kind of spoiler in the next paragraph... (it's not a novel, but these are the conclusions the author leaves us with)

Of course, there are examples of amazing people who persevere despite their many disadvantages- but those bottom 10% of kids who are living in really, really, really poor families (making under $11,000 a year for a family of 4) are getting very little of the help that they need from the government.

Nelson Zagalo

A journalistic book on the science of children behaviour development. Direct and clean, gives no answers, because there are no standardised answers that can be given to the individuality of human subjects.
However the book does a good work in opposing cognitive skills, measured by IQ tests, to non measurable personality traits, as grit, curiosity, conscientiousness and self-discipline. 

Extended analysis in my blog, soon.

Teresa Schultz

I decided to read How Children Succeed because it made someone's best books list for 2012. The short paragraph that went with it made it sound like it was a new tome on how to improve schools, a topic I've studied recently, so I picked up a copy. Turns out Paul Tough's tome is far more than this simple thesis, however, and made me think not only of how society needs to help children develop character but how my own character has affected my life and whether I could take steps to improve my character.

How Children Succeed focuses on just how much non-intelligence factors determine whether we'll succeed in school, in careers, in families and other relationships. Tough starts with the biology of stress, a health issue that seems to really be coming into its own, and how a lifetime of severe stress can actually physically affect us for the rest of our lives. For people who live in generational poverty, severe stress is almost impossible to avoid. He touches on how attachment parenting (although not the kind where you're with your child 24/7; more) can help children overcome that awful stress. For people who don't get that encouragement and reassurance, stress can lead to self-doubt, an inability to deal with emotions, problems focusing, etc. All issues that can stop someone from developing the character they need to push past failure and succeed. 

He also looks at how a lack of character is a problem for the affluent, too. (Here come the helicopter parents!) Overall, his book talks about how the country needs a uniform system to address not only academics in chidlren, but also character. He looks at some programs that are trying to do that in individual school systems, and some of them are showing results. However, he argues that all the programs are too separate and disjoined, and that a large, cooperative effort between health clinics, social services and counseling would work best.

Tough does a great job of not only making you care about the subject but also making you think about how these issues have affected your own life. There were so many points in the book where I thought about how my own lack of or strength of character shaped where I went. It made me not only want to help other people change but to also improve my own character.

He also keeps the book interesting to read. When you start delving into educational theory and the science of what happens to the brain when you're stressed, authors must walk the fine line of providing real information without boring their readers or burying them in jargon. Tough excels at this, partly by introducing us to real children and their incredibly interesting stories. Some are sad, some are hopeful, but they all keep you reading. I actually had a hard time putting the book down. It probably didn't hurt that at 197 pages, this is a short read.

I really suggest this book for anyone with kids or anyone who might be interested in understanding themselves better.

How Children Succeed Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character

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