Paul Tough | |
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 Paul Tough at the 2012 Texas Book Festival | |
| Born | 1967 (age 56–57) |
| Occupation(s) | Author, broadcaster, journalist |
Paul Tough (born 1967) is a Canadian-American writer and broadcaster. He is best known for authoring the works Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America and How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character.
He grew up in Toronto and was educated at the University of Toronto Schools. As a teenager, he was co-host of Anybody Home, a weekly youth-oriented programme broadcast nationally on CBC Radio until the show's cancellation in 1983. [1] [2] He has also served as an editor of The New York Times Magazine . [3]
Tough attended Columbia University for one semester in the fall of 1985. He then continued his studies at McGill University in Canada for three semesters. Ultimately, he left college without earning a degree. [4] Tough moved back to the United States in 1988 and worked for Harper's Magazine . In 1990, he received the Livingston Award, along with Jack Hitt, for an article they wrote about computer hackers that was published in Esquire . [5]
He returned to radio, becoming senior editor of This American Life . in the mid-1990s. In 1998, he returned to Canada to serve as editor of Saturday Night . [1] By 2000, Tough had returned to the United States to found Open Letters, an online magazine. [2]
He has written extensively about education, poverty and politics, including cover stories in the New York Times Magazine on the Harlem Children's Zone, the post-Katrina school system in New Orleans, the No Child Left Behind Act, and charter schools. He returned to This American Life in the early 2000s, where he reported, more recently, on the parents enrolled in the Harlem Children's Zone's Baby College. [6] His writing has appeared in Slate , GQ, Esquire, and The New Yorker .
Tough is the author of Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America and How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, which he published through Houghton Mifflin in 2008 and 2012 (respectively). [3] [7]
Whatever It Takes detailed the Harlem Children's Zone project, a multi-pronged effort within a ninety-seven block area of New York City founded in 1997 by Geoffrey Canada. Tough described how Canada has "believed that he could find the ideal intervention for each age of a child’s life, and then connect those interventions into an unbroken chain of support", with the Zone functioning as a social and economic "conveyor belt" working from children's birth to their college age. The New York Times ran a supportive review by Linda Perlstein of the National Education Writers Association; she wrote, "when it comes to an introduction to the debate about poverty and parenting in urban America, you could hardly do better than Tough’s book." [7]
How Children Succeed built upon the work of James Heckman, University of Chicago economist and Nobel lauterate, that stated that education should focus more on promoting the psychological traits of "conscientiousness" among children at young ages rather than more IQ-related studies later in life. Tough wrote explicitly, "There is no anti-poverty tool that we can provide for disadvantaged young people that will be more valuable than character strengths". He cited research such as the famous Perry Preschool Project to state that nurturing, supportive personal relationships with adults in educational settings promote non-cognitive attributes that lead to higher incomes, less criminality, and other benefits, even when children face harsh early environments, to deliver a message that Tough found "a bit warm and fuzzy" but "rooted in cold, hard science". As a key example, he cites the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, who studied how students instructed that people can boost themselves intellectually get higher grades than those who believe in a fixed idea of intelligence. [3]
The Washington Monthly ran a positive review by Thomas Toch, who stated that Tough made "a compelling case" in "an engaging book that casts the school reform debate in a provocative new light". [3] The Boston Globe ran a supportive article by Jenifer B. McKim; she wrote, "In this concise book, Tough provides deep research, expert testimony, and eloquently described real-life characters to make his case." [8]
James Arthur Baldwin was an American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain has been ranked among the best English-language novels. His 1955 essay collection Notes of a Native Son helped establish his reputation as a voice for human equality. Baldwin was a well-known public figure and orator, especially during the civil rights movement in the United States.
Jack Hitt is an American author. He has been a contributing editor to Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, This American Life, and the now-defunct magazine Lingua Franca. His work has appeared in such publications as Outside Magazine, Rolling Stone, Wired, Mother Jones, Slate, and Garden & Gun.
Harry Eugene Crews was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He often made use of violent, grotesque characters and set them in regions of the Deep South.
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The Dreamer of Oz: The L. Frank Baum Story is a 1990 American made-for-television biographical film starring John Ritter as Lyman Frank Baum, the author who wrote the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and thirteen other Oz books. Also starring in it were Annette O'Toole as Baum's supportive wife, Maud, and Rue McClanahan as Baum's tough mother-in-law, Matilda Gage.
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Rick Perlstein is an American historian and journalist who has garnered recognition for his chronicles of the post-1960s American conservative movement. The author of five bestselling books, Perlstein received the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his first book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. Politico has dubbed him "a chronicler extraordinaire of modern conservatism."
Beauford Delaney was an American modernist painter. He is remembered for his work with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as his later works in abstract expressionism following his move to Paris in the 1950s. Beauford's younger brother, Joseph, was also a noted painter.
Claude Brown was the author of Manchild in the Promised Land, published to critical acclaim in 1965, which tells the story of his coming of age during the 1940s and 1950s in Harlem. He also published Children of Ham (1976).
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The Lottery is a 2010 documentary film about the controversy surrounding public and charter schools in the United States, directed by Madeleine Sackler. The film was produced by Blake Ashman-Kipervaser, James Lawler, and Madeleine Sackler. The cinematographer was Wolfgang Held.
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Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence is a memoir by American social activist Geoffrey Canada. Beacon Press published the book on January 31, 1995.
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Dorothy Pitman Hughes was an American feminist, child-welfare advocate, activist, public speaker, author, and small business owner. Pitman Hughes co-founded the Women’s Action Alliance. Her activism and friendship with Gloria Steinem established racial balance in the nascent feminist movement.
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