How children succeed: Grit,curiosity,and the hidden power of character,Paul Tough

Reviewed by: Philip Young P Hong, Loyola University Chicago, USA

This book celebrates the “power of character” as it contributes to the long-term success of children. The term character is referred to as personality traits by psychologists and non-cognitive or soft skills by the Nobel laureate and economist James Heckman (2012/2013). The main argument is that these positive character traits make up the constellation of necessary ingredients for children’s success. The list can be summarized as persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence. He presents a strong voice refuting the dominant paradigm of cognitively based education for children by stating, “We have been focusing on the wrong skills and abilities in our children, and we have been using the wrong strategies to help nurture and teach those skills” (p.xv). He goes on to write that we live in a society that emphasizes the cognitive skills—i.e., intelligence measured on IQ tests—as the primary path to success for children with the belief that these skills need to be practiced as much as and as early as possible.

Based on this perspective, it will seem on the surface that disadvantaged children are falling behind early on in their lives compared to their more affluent counterparts because of insufficient cognitive training. Cognitive theorists would argue that this starts from their homes as indicated by the limited number of words they grow up hearing from their low-educated parents. While the vocabulary gap between the rich and the poor children does tend to predict lower-income children’s later stage failure in schools and life, a group of scholars in recent years have called into question the assumptions behind this cognitive hypothesis. The author effectively compiles research results from a congregation of economists, educators, psychologists, and neuroscientist to provide evidence that children’s success is not as largely determined by how much information gets registered in their brains during their formative years. Rather, what makes a real lasting difference is the development of non-cognitive skills.

The author impressively demonstrates scholarly rigor in making a sound argument for the importance of non-cognitive skills from a human development perspective. Following the publication of his seminal book, “Whatever it takes: Geoffrey Canada’s quest to change Harlem and American,” he leaves the New York Times and spends countless hours in 3 years to complete this book, carefully weaving the fabric of data, theories, and stories. He conducts intensive research and interviews with individuals whose detailed personal accounts are featured throughout the book. The mosaic of narratives, interpretations, and observations powerfully invites the readers into the “real” lives of young children and young adults who against all odds strive to make it out of their traumatic and challenging childhood. The heroic life victories and persistent and gradual forward progress exemplified by these individuals are beyond inspirational.

Contextualizing these accounts are interviews with national thinkers and leaders whose convictions have led them in diverse directions to teach, engage, provide services on, and research non-cognitive skills development. These individuals are paving the way, in their own corners and more recently in concert, for a new movement to build stronger evidence for character development as central to children’s success. He introduces Heckman’s study on these psychological character traits—particularly curiosity, self-control, and social fluidity—being responsible for at least two-thirds of the positive long-term outcomes resulting from a pre-school intervention. The outcomes of the treatment group far outweighed the control group in terms of the likelihood of graduating from high school, being employed at age 27, having an annual salary above $25,000 at age 40, having ever been arrested, and having received welfare.

This book, organized into five chapters, casts a wide net to provide the theoretical, empirical, anecdotal, and observational evidence in support of non-cognitive skills development in children, particularly among low-income children. The first two chapters masterfully connect the dots of knowledge generated from the school systems, community-based clinics, neurobiological, psychological, educational, and other social science research results. The author takes the readers through the process of empathizing with children’s situations of multidimensional barriers in which they seem destined to fail but remain resilient (Chapter 1) and introducing some of the model character building programs and the mechanism by which the goal of character development is promoted, monitored, and evaluated (Chapter 2).

The patterns and consequences of intergenerational poverty that commonly emerge from the lives of these young people—i.e., absent or neglectful parents, malfunctioning schools, and bad individual decisions—are painted as impossible situations for any hope to exist. It is not uncommon for children who grow up in stressful environments to display learning or behavioural problems. The author cites a series of research that explain the impact of early stress on the executive function of the brain, prefrontal cortex, which is critical in self-regulatory activities. Disadvantaged children generally tend to find it “harder to concentrate, harder to sit still, harder to rebound from disappointments, and harder to follow directions” (p.17). The victories arising from these worst possible situations mark “the profoundest sort of transformation: the moment when a young person manages to turn herself away from near-certain failure and begins to steer a course toward success” (p.48).

Strong parental attachment, responsiveness, and care would be ideal to help manage the traumatic life stressors of disadvantaged children, but many low-income parents have limited capacity when they themselves struggle with serious barriers. However, for young children who are able to set goals and gravitate towards them, readers would find next to them some marvellous teachers, mentors, coaches, friends, or other trustworthy individuals who are committed to steering their paths away from the adverse impact of their less than favourable social environment. The author maintains that non-cognitive skills can be developed at a later stage in life with the help of these sacrificial leaders who try to fill their early year losses. The virtuous character strengths espoused in this process are self-control and willpower, motivation, grit, the real-life attempt and failure, and social intelligence such as mental contrasting. Only by “climbing the mountain” to acquire character advantages for lower income children vis-à-vis their more affluent counterparts can one expect long-lasting positive outcomes.

The fact that these trusting figures surprisingly take them seriously, believe in their abilities, and challenge them to improve themselves motivates them to concentrate and practice the goal-oriented tasks at hand (Chapter 3). It takes a dedicated coach to challenge them “to look deeply at their own mistakes, examine why they made them, and think hard about what they might have done differently” (p.121). Teaching them a new way to think using higher-order mental capacities—cognitive flexibility and cognitive self-control—can certainly make a difference in transcending a crisis situation to a manageable one. The former, according to the author, is “the ability to see alternative solutions to problems, to think outside the box, to negotiate unfamiliar situations,” and the latter is “the ability to inhibit an instinctive or habitual response and substitute a more effective, less obvious one” (p.114). Taking the readers inside the minds of brilliant young chess players, the author suggests that the ability to recognize and utilize emotions is very important for successful outcomes.

The book concludes with a discussion on how to succeed (Chapter 4) and what better paths to lead (Chapter 5). Success for children is often used in the context of GPAs, test scores, entering college, completing college, and landing a good job in later stages of their lives. The book maintains that these immediate and long-shot “outcomes” are reached through a transformational “process” of developing non-cognitive skills and character strengths. Unfortunately, the traditional American educational system does not have the mechanism to help students acquire these skills. Despite the fact that education is growingly becoming unequal in terms of quality, with the help of highly effective teachers to focus on these skills, underperforming high-school students can be transformed to college-bound, successful students.

It matters whether one truly remains hopeful and believes in the possibility to continuously feed one’s forward progress through smaller scale failures and successes. Resilience, resourcefulness, girt, and ability to delay gratification are highly predictive of success. These qualities enable a student to fully devote herself to the lonely uphill battle and say, “No matter how overwhelming it is, no matter how exhausting it is, I’m not going to give up” (p.174). Given the disappearance of serious poverty debates with it being merged with the education debate in more recent years, the solution to poverty becomes restricted within the unequal educational system. Breaking out of this mould and asking how one can transform into a motivated student and in turn develop into a successful young adult could present a better path than the current race to the bottom. A better path for U.S. social policy would be to not just focus on cognitive intelligence but social and emotional intelligence of our future leaders is certainly well worth investing in.

The value of this book is that it brings together what may seem siloed streams of thinking, each resting within various academic disciplines and areas in society, under the common theme of this unobservable, intangible thing called “character”. The genealogy of research ideas and collaborative community ventures are captured with a smooth flow of events, which could perhaps be seen by the readers as the “new wave” of change that is destined to lead future innovative thinking, demonstration projects, and later ripple effects in the social and educational policy reform. One needs to be reminded that this book is not just about those “poor” kids. Nor should one assume that all or most disadvantaged children lack these character traits. Neglect and stress is not just prevalent in lower-income communities but they are also found fairly commonly in affluent communities. Therefore, the book’s emphasis on non-cognitive skills sends a message to “all” kids who are the future of our world.

It is important to pay attention to the upper end of the bell curve that represents many well-to-do children falling into despair. As the book suggests, high expectations with little LG (licking and grooming) type affection and care, coupled with a reward system based on good performance but with complete insulation from experiencing real-life failure, strips away the level of character development needed for future success. This type of environment breeds a different kind of dependence—i.e., family financial assets, network, social support, etc.—opposite from the kind of character highlighted in this book. Children who find themselves not capable of meeting these high expectations become depressed and lose self-confidence. When going to college, perhaps even some specific colleges in particular, gets communicated to children as a given expectation rather than a higher goal, many students are being set up for failure. Therefore, growing up in well-resourced educational environment may provide the opportunity to develop good cognitive intelligence, but when unmatched with appropriate social intelligence development, success may not be guaranteed or sustained.

In this regard, character or cognitive skills development is important for all children. And they are essential ingredients even for working-age adults if they had no opportunities to have ever developed them. Parallel to some of the research featured in the book, the salience of non-cognitive skills is found in adult job training and employment readiness programs. When program participants and service providers were asked in focus groups how they define self-sufficiency as a success measure of these programs, it was found to be a transformational process of overcoming barriers and becoming psychologically empowered as they move toward their goals (Hong, 2013; Hong et al., 2009). This process involves developing psychological self-sufficiency that comprises employment hope and perceived employment barriers.

Employment hope is a key strength quality necessary in overcoming the obstacles as one takes first steps toward employment and strive to sustain employment. This is a form of mental contrasting, the term mentioned earlier, that involves concentrating on a positive outcome and simultaneously concentrating on the obstacles in the way (p.93). This process generates energy toward goals by associating reality with future. Without the pool of employment hope, it is hard to imagine a child to champion the early years of trauma without giving in to the negative structural, institutional, family, and individual barriers. Via employment hope, one would find resilience and the positive power of character—persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence—activated and interact in ways to impact economic success.

The non-cognitive skills should not replace the hard skills—i.e., job-related skills and educational credentials—but rather be seen as a container in which these skills could be held. When the container is found to be cracked and starts to leak, it will not be possible to fill it up. Therefore, one ought to fix the container with non-cognitive skills first before pouring any of the traditional methods into the container. Consistent with the character traits that are important in childhood, low-income adult jobseekers struggle with the same unresolved issues, manifested in the lack of the soft skills—i.e., being punctual, following workplace rules and directions, managing anger and frustration in situations of stress or confrontation, etc.

In order to nurture some of these non-cognitive skills even later in life for adult who may not have had the kind of childhood that provided the soil and the environment, workforce development programs could focus more on the soft skills that Heckman (2012/2013) would maintain to contribute significantly to various success outcomes—i.e., openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism/emotional stability. Universal investment in these qualities early on in childhood would not only save the direct cost associated with “leaking” but also the cost associated with the multiplier effects of untreated trauma. In a new era of social policies not for public dependency but for self-sufficiency, government commitment to non-cognitive skills development could serve as a renewed social contract that focuses on human development and capabilities from the cradle to the grave.