The brilliant education thinker explains why so much of what we're doing to low-income kids in school is wrong.
Salon: Your new book “Helping Children Learn” is subtitled “What Works and Why.” But if I may, I’d like to suggest a different subtitle: “Just About Everything We’re Doing to Low-Income Kids in School is Wrong and Here’s the Neuro-Biological Research to Explain Why.” Was it just me or does the research you write about upend some pretty fundamental assumptions?
Paul Tough: I was struck by that too. Some of the basic principles we have, in terms of discipline, in terms of pedagogy and how we run our schools are not advantageous to kids who are growing up in adversity. This research on just how boring school is really resonated with me, especially the research about how when you’re growing up in a low-income community, school is more likely to be repetitive, boring and unmotivating. I hadn’t really picked up on that as being a significant problem before doing this reporting, but this research was really persuasive to me, not only that it’s true for a lot of kids but that it really matters in terms of their motivation. I think I was also more attuned to what happens in American schools and in classrooms because my older son is now in school.
Your new book is quite short and, in my experience at least, doesn’t require
much perseverance to complete. But on the assumption that not everyone who starts it will finish it, could you highlight a particularly disadvantageous
education policy or approach?
There is a lot about the way we punish and discipline kids that the research increasingly shows just doesn’t work, especially for non-violent offenses. The idea that all kids need is no excuses schools and strong discipline to succeed is clearly not supported in the research. The other is the general disconnect between early childhood and K-12 schooling. My first book was about the Harlem Children’s Zone, and part of what I was drawn to more than a decade ago when I first reporting on it was that Geoffrey Canada thought that we needed a pipeline that started with kids and parents at birth and continued on through early childhood, pre-k-, kindergarten and onto school. But what he did and his thinking hasn’t been replicated. All the way from the federal government down to local school boards, there are very few places where we think about a continuum of schooling, where the kindergarten teachers are thinking about what’s happening when kids are one or two or three. At the same time, science is pushing us towards understanding how important those early years are. To me that’s a long overdue conversation.
For the entire interview with Paul Tough and Jennifer Berkshire, please click here
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