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Please read this book to open your eyes about what can and should be done to support ground-breaking schools such as the Harlem Children's Zone. Systems need to be put in place to break the poverty cycle for the most needy and need to be given a chance at a better life through opening the door to an education system that works. Link the schools' budgets with the jail budgets. Keep children off the path to incarceration and towards becoming productive citizens.
This book describes an important effort to extend our educational system to all children, especially those now being neglected or being given up on. It makes clear how difficult it will be to make this change, how much dedication it will take and how much more than just changing educational processes are involved. But while it's not at all a rosy picture that the book paints, it does give one hope that at least some people are trying to do something significant about our educational problem, that they are learning from their mistakes and successes, and that eventually real improvements will be made.
Anyone who has been involved in the development and implementation of community empowerment programs (my area of interest has been health promotion) will recognize the trials and tribulations that Canada has gone through to develop a broad spectrum of programs; i.e. A great model that can be transported to other locales serving the poor. finding that working with the local school district is tough if not improbable. The broadness of programs to address children's needs from birth through graduation of HS that he has developed is awesome. However, most of us in poor rural areas don't have access to the benefactors that Mr. Canada cultivated over the years.
Interesting read which I have recommended to many of my friends. It addresses not only the symptoms of the problems in our inner cities, but aims at the root causes. For those of us who have lived through the race riots of the 60s-70s, Great Society programs and their derivatives, and blame cast in many directions, it is encouraging to read of some success stories while understanding a little of why success was achieved and could be duplicated. It is much more than a biography of Geoffrey Canada.
Found book to be a solid, non-sentimental look at race and poverty in America. Paul Tough does an excellent job of presenting obtuse academic studies in a no-nonsense narrative style that weaves Geoffrey Canada's vision, passion, and ultimately patient, steady course as a true American hero for his proven method of breeding success where others have failed or cut corners. As a higher education professional, I devoured the 'whole community' method that Canada's model puts in place and the 'conveyor belt' approach, or what is commonly called 'pipeline' method of ensuring we as educators don't drop our kids before they reach college. Would like to see Paul Tough take on the higher education side of the house next - just because Geoffrey Canada will be sending them to college doesn't mean we in higher ed know how to get them to graduate ready for real world jobs.
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