Helping Children

Four years ago, the New York Times Magazine journalist Paul Tough published a book titled “How Children Succeed,” which argued that the modern obsession with increasing student scores in reading and math misses most of what matters in education. Instead, character traits like grit, curiosity, persistence and self-­control are the keys to success in school, college and life.

Test-weary parents and teachers embraced the message, and Tough spent the next few years speaking, traveling and reporting on programs laboring to put these ideas into practice. But in doing so, he noticed a “paradox” — many of the educators who were unusually good at teaching grit and self-control didn’t use those words to describe their aims. Often, they weren’t even aware that they were avatars of what Tough believed was a groundbreaking new approach to education. Why? And what did that mean? Tough’s new book, “Helping Children Succeed,” describes his attempt to find out.

Less a full-length sequel to “How Children Succeed” than a short companion, “Helping Children Succeed” argues that skills like emotional regulation and stick-to-it-iveness can’t be taught in the same way children are trained to decode phonemes and solve quadratic equations. “No child ever learned curiosity by filling out curiosity work sheets,” he notes. Instead, character is the product of environments in which children form strong, secure attachments to teachers and caregivers, and are taught in ways that stimulate their autonomy and ability to solve problems.