Donna Foote reviewed Whatever It Takes in the Washington Post Book World yesterday, describing the Harlem Children’s Zone as “a social experiment so radical and potentially transforming that Barack Obama has promised a ‘few billion dollars a year’ to replicate it in 20 cities should he become president.”
She called the book “a you-are-there recording of the project’s development, amazing growth and potential promise — and an informed primer on the correlation between race, poverty and the achievement gap in America.”
Tags: newspapers, reviews, Washington
You shouldn’t have to agree with an author in order to learn from their books. Whatever It Takes, Relentless Pursuit, and Tested, or the New Yorker articles by Katherine Boo are three great works that do a wonderful service by a) placing complex and contradictory dynamics in a clear manner, and b) giving the reader a feel for poor children.
My complaint with education books that read like a manifesto are not that I disagree with their authors. Ideological books like No Excuses or Its Being Done shown no sensitivity to schooling and have a deaf ear in regard to children and teens.