According to Tough and some of his subjects, the key ingredient is grit, the ability to persist in the face of obstacles and even failure.

GRIT! I thought.  This is what I’ve been saying all along!  If I can face down my limitations, if I can labour to be, not perfect, but better – I will be … happy?  Is grit something we can learn?  If so, how can we teach it? …

Teaching them how to write a commentary is all very well, but what is it for?  Maybe the main thing is for is to help them practice grit: Yes, it’s hard.  Just keep going.  If you fail, fail as well as you can, and then try again.

We need to spend less time talking about literary techniques and more time talking about grit.

Curious’s blog post has so far collected 219 comments.

On July 21, I’ll be appearing in something called “Literary Primetime with Paul Tough” at the Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta. It’s part of the Banff Summer Arts Festival. Tickets are now on sale.

Tough’s book is the distillation of four years of reporting he did on the HCZ, while working for the New York Times magazine. It traces the evolution of Canada’s efforts, narrating both the wonderful successes (such as the Baby College that teaches even the most inept and unprepared parents how to properly foster their child’s cognitive development) as well as the failures — the most heartbreaking of which is the summary expulsion of an underperforming class of eighth graders from his charter school, the Promise Academy. …

Harlem is one of the most complicated, fascinating, and exasperating neighborhoods in North America. Geoffrey Canada is a remarkable man, and Paul Tough has written a small masterpiece about him and his community.

What’s the story on this Harlem Children’s Zone that’s captured the imagination of a president?

After all, for the longest time, the corner of 125th and Madison in Harlem was the intersection of poverty and failure.

But these days, for 97 blocks around, you’re in The Zone, a great big social experiment in education and hope.

More than 7,000 kids and their parents are being taught that just because they’re broke or living in public housing, it doesn’t mean they can’t succeed.

The program isn’t just trying to solve problems in education. It’s trying to bust poverty in America, according to journalist Paul Tough.

He’s the author of the new book Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest To Change Harlem And America.

To see me wearing an incredible amount of makeup and sitting in front of a fake background of New York City at night and talking about New Orleans and Harlem, just click here.