{"id":201,"date":"2008-10-20T10:59:38","date_gmt":"2008-10-20T14:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=201"},"modified":"2008-10-20T11:01:03","modified_gmt":"2008-10-20T15:01:03","slug":"review-of-tough-whatever-it-takes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=201","title":{"rendered":"Review of Tough, Whatever it Takes"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I like this review<\/a> by Linda Perlstein (Tested, Not much just chillin’) of Paul Tough’s semi-biography of Gerald Canada. (And I love both of her books; if they were slightly shorter, I’d probably assign one or both to my foundations classes. And I already use the Tough piece from Times magazine in 2006.) <\/p>\n

My only complaint — and it’s minor — regarding both the review and the actual project emerges from the focus on “culture.” Certainly this is Canada’s explicit project; in his own words, he’s seeking to “contaminate” the prevailing culture in Harlem, to challenge the cultural values of this 97 block area of Harlem. <\/p>\n

I’d argue that this is misleading and unfair to many of the students. Culture emerges from larger socio-economic and political structures; these larger structures provide limits to what children and parents can attempt to do. Not impassable limits — there will always be those families who rise — but don’t talk about changing the culture when there are no jobs, when the political players mostly ignore these families, and when necessary institutions consistently fail these neighborhoods. <\/p>\n

A discussion of culture, though, gains traction on both the left and the right. Talking about structural inequality isn’t glamorous and is all but discredited within the political process. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I like this review by Linda Perlstein (Tested, Not much just chillin’) of Paul Tough’s semi-biography of Gerald Canada. (And I love both of her books; if they were slightly shorter, I’d probably assign one or both to my foundations classes. And I already use the Tough piece from Times magazine in 2006.) My … Continue reading Review of Tough, Whatever it Takes<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8rNFZ-3f","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}