Paul Tough

Writer & Speaker

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

Early Ed Watch Q&A

Yesterday on Early Ed Watch, a blog about early education from the New American Foundation, Lisa Guernsey, the director of the foundation’s early education initiative, published a Q&A that she did with me on early education, my new book, the Harlem Children’s Zone, and “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” among other topics. An excerpt:

I’m working on a new book that has me back out visiting a lot of schools, and I’m interested in the so-called non-cognitive aspects of persistent poverty and educational opportunities that help people escape from poverty.  I’m looking at how – both at the preschool level and also the high school level – interventions may focus on aspects of character or personality or executive function. For me personally that’s the most interesting thing going on out there. It’s really early and less connected and less well-formed as an argument than what I was writing about in Whatever it Takes, but it contains the germ of having new ways of thinking about poverty and what is going on in the lives of poor kids and what kinds of interventions might get them out of poverty.


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