Perspective

How Children Succeed is written by Paul Tough, an author who has dedicated his professional life to researching education and child development. His particular interests while working for The New Yorker and The New York Times have been childhood and character, which essentially led him to composing this book. Throughout the book, Tough mentions meeting teachers, educators, and students while working on other projects, which at times can make this book feel like an anthology of past projects rather than a cohesive, single-minded work. It's clear that through his years of research, Tough has formed strong relationships with many of the students, like Kewauna Lerma, and these personal relationships may have influenced his professional approach. It is difficult for Tough to view these students as statistics, which would allow him to analyze their histories objectively, rather than complicated human beings whom he must view subjectively. The fact that...