The Grit That Makes Good Schools Great

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

Every four or five years, another study comes out claiming that American schools have hit rock bottom. Seniors can’t find their hometowns on a map, name the elements that comprise water, or parse “Dick and Jane” grammar. Each time, a flurry of “reformers” manhandles the school system, kids’ experiences change little, and we wait for the next study. Surely there must be a better way.

Of course there is. Ex-New York Times journalist Paul Tough investigates several schools that have bucked the downward trend, producing upwardly mobile graduates from adverse circumstances. Avoiding the sort of moddish educational philosophy promulgated by professors who mainly work with graduate students, Tough goes in the field, and reports only what he can back with real-world results and scientific research.

He finds that the traditional academic disciplines seem to matter less than habits of character. Anyone who has taught will agree this seems obvious, yet so much educational theory has emphasized the memorization of subject matter. Standardized tests and the GED reward students for book smarts; but higher-order skills, like self-discipline and diligence, have more to do with students’ success in school, and in later life.

Researchers call these “noncognitive” skills, since they have to do with principles that cannot be quantified on cognitive tests. Having discretion cannot be measured like one’s ability to complete analogies; conscientiousness is not essentially similar to mathematical reasoning. Yet people who have these character traits are more likely to learn the academic skills in school, and more likely to apply them in work, family, and social life as adults.

Schools have been reluctant to teach character skills. In part, this is because character and ethics have often kept company with religion, which is dynamite in public schools. But also, character can be political: conservatives tend to favor traits like “individualism” and “self-reliance,” while liberals like “justice” and “equality.” Whose values do we teach, so we don’t offend others?

Paul Tough

It turns out, many researchers have spent much time and effort finding values that transcend politics, religion, and history. They’ve successfully pinned down several that not only have clear definitions, but which teachers can incorporate into their lesson plans. The traits which researchers identify have different names—one list may include words like “ambition” and “professionalism,” another may name “courage” and “grit.”

But, no matter what we call the virtues, they share a few important traits: they transfer from the school out into the adult world, and they have concrete qualities which mentors can teach. In families where parents teach these virtues to their children, success seems to run in the family. That’s why the well-heeled seem to remain rich from generation to generation. But some parents don’t know these virtues, and thus can’t pass them along.

The bad news, then, is that character virtues, or the lack thereof, are generational. The good news is that conventional classrooms can close the gap when parents don’t know how to teach values. Transformational teachers do not convey information; they instill character. Paul Tough observes ways in which teachers successfully teach virtues, and follows the research on what we still need to learn. He does not bother with high-minded hypotheses; he shows where and how schools succeed.

This book is not entirely original. Tough not only cites Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, he even revisits one of Gladwell’s sources. Much of what Tough says overlaps recent work by writers like Susan Cain, Jack Hitt, Charles Duhigg, and the disgraced Jonah Lehrer. Some of his final chapter recites claims John Taylor Gatto has made for two decades. Not that this is bad; it probably means these ideas’ time has come (I think it has). But be prepared to rewalk some roads you’ve traveled recently.

Tough also sometimes contradicts himself. For instance, he says high school GPA is a more reliable indicator of college success than standardized tests, then admits some high schools pass students who merely show up and stay awake. He says parents who soothe kids through stress empower them for the future, then praises chess teacher Elizabeth Spiegel, whose blunt style seems stress-inducing, if not downright scary. So which is it?

Notwithstanding these limitations, Tough’s readable book combines the latest science of developmental psychology, with exposés of schools that actually turn disadvantaged youth into successful graduates. He gives we who teach real hope that our actions can make a difference, not just now, but throughout our students’ lives. It reminds us why we became teachers, and restores our hope that we can make a difference.

The Wandering Christian and the Lost Blessing

John Hagee, The Power of the Prophetic Blessing

On the one hand, I appreciate Pentecostal pastor John Hagee’s attempt to reclaim an ancient Jewish tradition as part of the Christian heritage. The blessings distributed by patriarchs, prophets, and Christ should be part of our faith, as they were for Jesus Himself. On the other hand, Hagee has not written the book he promised in the dust flap copy, and certainly not the book a scholarly Protestant like me would want to see.

When God called Abram out of Ur to found a new nation, God poured a blessing on the chosen patriarch. Isaac famously blessed Jacob (at Esau’s expense), a blessing that observant Jews have used as a model for parental blessings for centuries. Time and again, the Gospels talk of Jesus “blessing” the multitudes, and as Hagee notes, Jesus’ blessing was probably similar in form and content to Jacob’s blessing on his sons and their tribes.

So far, so good. I both like and agree with Hagee’s core thesis. Christians really should reclaim more of our Hebrew heritage. But then Hagee goes off on tangents. He throws in lengthy diatribes against evolution and abortion, and multiple discursions on Christian Zionism, all in just the early chapters. The point Hagee actually set out to make disappears, sometimes for dozens of pages. It feels like he’s begging me to disagree with him.

For instance, his Christian Zionist fulminations completely ignore that the modern state of Israel is largely secularized. Observant Jews emigrating internationally today are more likely to move to the United States than Israel. Likewise, in his jeremiads against evolution, he notes that Scripture says we are fearfully and wonderfully made by God, and exclaims (repeatedly) “You did not evolve!” He never says what makes the two exclusive.

It got to where, every time I put the book down to cook dinner or go to work, it took an effort of will to pick it back up again. He had a Scripturally solid core in his book, but he chose to ornament it with buzzwords and side remarks designed to connect with a pre-made conservative Evangelical audience. Did he perhaps include these irrelevant parenthetical digressions as an in-group signal? If so, that’s risky, because it also excludes new audiences.

Hagee crossed the final line with me in a text box which read: “Think on this. When a believer is in the middle of God’s will, he has perfect peace even during the greatest crisis of his life.” Beg your pardon? Was Job out of God’s will when he couldn’t take the pain anymore and cried out? Was Elijah out of God’s will when he felt he’d been abandoned by the straying nation? Scripture doesn’t seem to think so.

Claims like this alarm me, because they tell people suffering routine, human struggles of faith that they have already failed. If I believe Hagee, then when some setback or personal tragedy fills me with worry or grief, I start reprimanding myself for straying from God’s will. That seems like a small God to me, who cannot accommodate our fears and doubts without treating us like apostates. The God I worship is bigger than that.

Scripture certainly doesn’t blame Jesus for weeping at Lazarus’ tomb. It doesn’t devalue His blessings for praying at Gethsemane that God take this cup from Him. It doesn’t diminish His claim to divinity for Him wondering on the cross why God had forsaken Him. If the Son of Man can feel such suffering and doubt, yet remain the giver of eternal life, how arrogant must I be to think that I can never face life’s misgivings or turmoil?

In essence, Hagee tries to do too much, with the unsurprising result that he talks himself into a corner. He bounces from topic to topic so fast that he does none of them any justice. In so doing, he short-changes his core thesis, confuses people who don’t share his evangelical argot, and alienates readers like me who expect a heartier level of insight. As an ardent Christian, I should be among Hagee’s audience, yet this book leaves me frustrated.

Hagee is not the first to deal with these topics, and certainly not the best. While I think Hagee’s heart is in the right place, his incoherently inclusive style, frenetic wanderings, and questionable exegesis leave me cold. Trent and Smalley address the same topics in The Blessing, without the hyperbolic boasting or the cow paths. I like Hagee’s point, I just don’t think he’s the one to sell it.

The Life of Burma's First Citizen

Peter Popham, The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi

It’s amazing, sometimes, how we can admire individuals in the public eye, yet know so little about them. Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Burma’s democratic resistance movement, has drawn international acclaim, celebrity support, and the Nobel Peace Prize; yet her actual identity remains an enigma outside her home country. British journalist Peter Popham tries to explain her life, her work, and her context in this new biography.

Known as Daw Suu to her adherents (literally “Aunt Suu”), the daughter of General Aung San stands as heir to her country’s name and reputation. General Aung San fought the British until he squeezed independence from them, but was assassinated before seeing the free Burmese flag flying. To keep the general’s family under control, the new state gave his widow a diplomatic posting to India, and young Suu grew up mostly abroad.

Like most post-colonial nations, three forces have torn at Burma’s history. The military wants to rule with colonial impunity, as in Pakistan; the intelligentsia wants Western-style democracy, as in India; and people groups that never enjoyed colonial privilege want to restore ancestral identity, as in Biafra. From her adoptive home in England, Suu watched the military, the University of Rangoon, and the Buddhist monks feud for control of the nation.

It’s impossible to detail Suu’s life without investigating the history of her homeland, and Popham doesn’t even try. He minutely examines the forces that led Burma’s nascent democracy into a military dictatorship, and one of Asia’s most developed nations into the pits of extreme poverty. (These passages run to the prolix. Some of Popham’s best passages are also his most technical and difficult; be prepared to soldier through some dense prose.)

For a woman so innately tied, in world narrative, with her country, it may come as a surprise, as it did for me, that she scarcely lived in Burma until her early forties. She attended graduate school in England, married a white man, and had two sons. But she remained in touch with Burma, visiting often, and putting her sons through Buddhist rites of adulthood. She also made a career writing about Burma for Westerners.

Only in 1988, when the increasingly doddery military strongman who ruled her homeland appeared on the brink of collapse, did she return. Even then, she intended it to be a brief stop, lending her father’s name to the burgeoning democracy movement. She had no way of knowing that she would step into a situation where her every action would be freighted with import, her face would energize masses, and she would be unable to leave for twenty-four years.

Popham explains how Suu’s outsider perspective had a profound transformative effect on Burma. In a country where power has always been a zero-sum game (you flourish only at my expense), her spirit of cooperation took the military rulers by surprise. She made inroads against the regime by simply speaking politely. And no matter what, she refused to hit back. Popham acknowledges Suu’s debt, in this, to Gandhi.

This positions her perfectly to communicate her nation’s plight to the outside world. She speaks unaccented Burmese and practices the Buddhism of her deeply religious homeland, but she has a Western education and can speak to Euro-American understanding. As an outsider in both worlds, she has the ability to recognize deeply ingrained prejudices, and subvert them without appearing confrontational.

Some of Popham’s biography is already outdated. It was published in Britain in 2011 before swimming to America this year, and recent changes don’t come up. For instance, Popham makes repeated reference to the fact that Suu has not left the country since 1988, not even to be at her dying husband’s bedside. Not so anymore: earlier this summer, the flagging government let her visit Europe to collect her Nobel Prize.

And despite his best efforts, Popham sometimes comes across as patronizing. He keeps commenting on Suu’s appearance. She’s a beautiful woman, certainly, even now in her late sixties. But nobody would extol young Gandhi’s brooding good looks, surely. Besides, it’s hard for a white European to comment on post-colonial Asia without relying on tropes that would make the late Edward Said pale.

But despite its shortcomings, Popham has crafted a smart, engaging biography of a nation, and its most prominent citizen. He helps white onlookers like me understand not only who Suu is, but why her ongoing campaign matters. And he gives us a model for how the fight for global justice will persevere despite fleeting adversity. Well done.

Reviewer’s Note: this review, and the book in it, were written when Suu was an oppressed outsider leading a resistance movement. After this book and its review, Suu was elected head of state in Myanmar, where she was forced to make the kind of ethical compromises that insiders have to make. Once a Nobel Prize winner and a symbol of resistance, Suu fell on international disfavor. Let this be a lesson: if you want to be internationally loved, never seek nor achieve power over others.

The Fine Line Between SF and a Double-Dog Dare

Christian Cantrell, Containment

Concept-driven science fiction can easily backfire, because it relies on the audience’s willingness to follow the idea more than the characters or plot. Science fiction probably has better audiences for that than most other genres, but still, it’s risky. Christian Cantrell’s debut novel requires readers to invest over 150 pages to reach his real, king-snake crawling story. I almost didn’t, so I fear less driven readers won’t, either.

Deep within the claustrophobic confines of humanity’s first Venus colony, Arik lies recovering from injuries suffered during his unauthorized airlock walk. Huge chunks of his memory are missing, and his life’s work in terraforming is gone from his computer. His pregnant wife is talking in riddles, and his father is clearly lying about something. So Arik starts digging for the truth. What he finds casts doubt on his entire life and everything his people have accomplished.

Throughout the first half of this 300-page book, I kept rolling my eyes. The science appeared decades out of date, and the characters didn’t so much talk to each other as discourse on themes. (The promo copy compares this novel to Orson Scott Card, but the dispassionate characters and expository narration remind me more of Isaac Asimov.) Several times I had to resist the temptation to stick this book in a bottom drawer and forget it.

I’m glad I didn’t, because around the midpoint, we fall into unexpected revelations that force us to rethink what we’ve just seen. The big reveal is neither original nor particularly surprising (I got it twenty pages before our “supergenius” protagonist), but Cantrell handles it with panache. And even if we feel we’ve seen something like this before, Cantrell keeps it smart, with degrees of nuance that ensure his revelation feels at least somewhat new.

But you have to push through a very long slough of despond to reach the real meat of Cantrell’s story. No one could blame you if, well before page 100, you chucked the book aside—though you should not. If you want to know what makes this book worth reading, keep going, but you’ll find spoilers. If you want to enjoy the book and be surprised, stop now, realizing this book will yield its generous rewards only after a long and difficult investment.

Our lives rely profoundly on testimony. We expect our peers, elders, and senses to report the world accurately. Without their honest testimony, we have no basis for judging truth. That’s why philosophers from Plato and Descartes to The Matrix and M. Night Shyamalan get such mileage out of questioning what happens when everything we think we know proves false. It’s a fertile conundrum that is far from played out.

The wobbly science and sociology in the first half exists so that, in the second half, Cantrell can tear it all back down again. The world we, and our protagonist, thought we knew turns out to be something between eugenics and a rat in a maze. Though I won’t reveal the particulars—Arik’s dawning realization is half the appeal—I will go so far as to say that Cantrell rewards doubt beyond merely systemic, into a realm of existentialism that would make Kierkegaard blanche.

With science fiction, unfortunately, changing technologies mean a story’s details get outmoded long before its philosophical precepts wear out. (Or have you tried reading Philip K. Dick lately?) Weirdly, Cantrell tries to straddle the line between scientific accuracy and rococo technology, the two traditional SF options. In the first half of the book, I found this very distracting. Only in the second half did I realize this distancing effect may have been intentional.

Cantrell, as it turns out, wants you to call BS on his creation. His writing style is almost a challenge: can you tell the difference between an error and a clue? What constitutes “outside reality” in a life defined by constraints? Cantrell’s language in the waning pages suggests that the revelations will not end when you close the book. Layers of reality may linger, waiting to be uncovered by the next supergenius in the pipeline.

I would be remiss if I told everyone to read this book. Christian Cantrell has engineered a story that will select its own audience, and that audience will want to revel in ideas as much as action. If that’s you, resist the temptation to walk away from this book early. If you do, you’re cheating yourself out of a smart, subtle denouement that would remind you why you read science fiction anyway.

Short, Sweet Steps to Build Talent at Any Age

Daniel Coyle, The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills

Current society worships child prodigies and assumes that, if you had the potential to excel at something, you already would excel. I can’t count the number of times I tried to persuade my students that they need not rely on some “gift” to improve their writing and reasoning skills. I often failed to convince them, because they were immersed in the cult of innate talent. Plus, I lacked the skills to ease them through the process of self-improvement.

In his prior book, The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle traveled to several different schools, camps, and academies that exist to cultivate talent in particular areas. He observed a wide variety of fields, from music and art to sports to technical trades. And he found that most of these schools used the same small handful of techniques. Now, in this follow-up volume, Coyle distills those techniques to a handful of brief lessons that fit inside a pocket-sized volume for easy reading.

Talent, says Coyle, is not the exclusive domain of prodigies to whom success comes easily. Such crackerjacks tend to burn out early, or get discouraged when what seemed easy turns increasingly difficult. Instead, the best talent, and most impressive success, tends to accrue to those willing to work hard, make incremental gains, seek out the best teachers, and invest aggressively in their own growth. Coyle shows how that’s done.

Some of Coyle’s pointers seem obvious. When he tells us to “Learn Hard Skills First” or “Break Every Move Down Into Chunks,” he says little our grade school teachers didn’t try to tell us first, if we’d cared enough to listen. Yet how many of us actually do this? It’s easy, for instance, to want to skip the “hard” technical skills and race headlong into the “soft” expressive skills before we have a firm foundation. I know how common this is, because I have both seen and done it.

Daniel Coyle

But others of Coyle’s pointers seem to come from out of left field. How many of us would think to “Embrace Struggle” or “Pay Attention Immediately After You Make a Mistake”? Most of us avoid struggle, which is painful, or flee mistakes, which we regard as failure. Considering how many of our schoolteachers made us feel stupid if we had to work hard, holding our flubs up for public scorn (or was that just me?), we probably have much to unlearn.

I especially appreciate Coyle’s insistence on risk-taking as a learning endeavor. Too often, we associate risk with imminent failure, and retreat into our shells. I've written before on the importance of taking risks and being willing to look dumb as necessary to our growth. But Coyle backs this up with evidence from diverse experiences and difficult discoveries, explaining not just why risk is good, but how to tell valuable risk from wasted time.

If your school days were anything like mine, your life followed two parallel tracks. In the “school track,” you faced hours seated in a chair, facing forward like a soldier in a regiment, while an authority figure talked past you, then rendered judgment on your ability to perform “skillz drillz.” In the “life track,” you pushed yourself to improve at something you loved, even if it meant giving up something else, working through pain, or practicing in solitude.

Like me, you associated the tedious “school track” with learning, and the exciting “life track” with fun. You never thought of your “life track” activities as a form of study and practice, because study was boring, and life made you feel alive. But Coyle describes how the best schools don’t allow you to follow two separate tracks, keeping life and learning hand in hand. This means that, as long as you remain alive, you still have the opportunity to learn and improve.

Coyle does not bother with windy explanations of how and why his pointers work. Though he throws in real-life examples where it helps, he keeps his pointers brief and energetic (only a handful run over two pages). If you must understand the process, recent books like Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit or Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success explain the science and sociology, but you don’t really need them.

Rather than explicate how learning works, or why learning matters, he delivers short, workable guides to how you can learn any skill, at any age. You’re never too old, too established, or too creaky to improve your skills. You just need the opportunity, which Coyle provides in spades.