Introduction Summary and Analysis

In the book's introduction, journalist and author Paul Tough visits a variety of elementary school classrooms to analyze their different methods of educating children. The school, Tools of the Mind, a pre-kindergarten program, focuses on teaching behavioral skills rather than academic information. Students are taught how to control their impulses, stay focused, avoid distractions, manage their emotions, and organize their thoughts rather than the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Tough's wife has just given birth to a baby, a son named Ellington, whom Tough invariably thinks about during his school visits: "Ellington would be growing up in a culture saturated with an idea you might call the cognitive hypothesis: the belief, rarely expressed aloud but commonly held nonetheless, that success today depends primarily on cognitive skills ... and that the best way to develop these skills is to practice them as...