E-mail a friendGeoff Canada, Paul Tough
airdate September 26, 2008
Geoffrey Canada went from the tough South Bronx streets to earning his master's from Harvard to becoming a visionary on parenting and children's issues. He runs the Harlem Children's Zone, which has been lauded as a bold anti-poverty effort. Paul Tough writes for The New York Times. He was previously editor at Harper's and producer of NPR's This American Life. One of America's foremost writers on poverty, education and the achievement gap, Tough chronicles Canada's pioneering social experiment in his book, Whatever It Takes.
Harlem Children's Zone CEO and journalist-author tackle the issues of the roles of parents and teachers in the lives of inner-city students. (4:12)
Full interview. (23:29)
Geoff Canada, Paul Tough
Tavis: In the early 1990s, Geoffrey Canada came up with an idea that not many people held out much hope for: transform Harlem by creating a dedicated geographic area that promotes learning, achievement and success. "The New York Times" called his Harlem Children's Zone one of the most ambitious social experiments of our time.
The new book about the remarkable program is written by Paul Tough, editor for "The New York Times" magazine. The book is called "Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America." Geoff, always honored to see you and have you back on this program.
Geoffrey Canada: Tavis, it's always a pleasure. I'm really glad I'm here.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you here and, Paul, good to see you and to meet you as well.
Paul Tough: Good to see you.
Tavis: Let me start, Geoff, with the obvious question. For those who have never heard of, do not know about, the Harlem Children's Zone, tell me what it is and what it was designed to do.
Canada: Well, Tavis, we decided that there were so many obstacles facing certain children in this country and we work in Harlem that we had to work in a place. In that place, we couldn't do one thing for children. We had to do everything, so we start with children at birth, with Baby College, and then we have a four-year-old program and then we run schools and we stay with these kids until we get them in college and then through college.
The idea is not just to provide education, but provide social support, health and cultural activities, to really make sure that our young people have an opportunity to be successful. We've done it in 97 blocks in Harlem. We're working with about 8,000 and we want to go to 10,000 children in that area to really touch all of the children's lives.
Tavis: Tell me where the idea comes to do this and where the evidence was that suggested to you that you could be successful with this kind of unique model.
Canada: Well, here was the problem. I had been working in Harlem with young people for about ten years and I thought I was doing a good job. Then I began to look at the numbers. When you look at the data and you say, "What's happening to our children?" I found out our children weren't doing better. They were actually doing worse.
When you look at the data for a place like central Harlem, more children were going into jails, more children were unemployed, more children were involved in gangs, more children were dropping out of school. We said, "Look, the kids who were with us, they were doing all right, but what about all these other kids?" So if we were gonna try and fix this, if we really care about these communities, we can't work with ten percent or twenty percent of the kids when eighty percent of the kids were in trouble.
We decided we had to change our model. We had to go in there and really reach large numbers of children and not wait until the children were so far gone that we were struggling to try and rescue those kids, but to get them early, get them on grade level and keep them on grade level so these kids could really reach their full potential.
Tavis: I've been there, as you know. I've seen the work that you're doing, but I guess I'm still struggling with what it was back then that made you think that you could bite off a chunk this big and be reasonably successful with it. I mean, we don't typically start programs with blocks and blocks and blocks of kids. We start small, we build and you've done that. But your small was big to begin with.
Canada: Yeah. Well, this is the problem, you know. In a place like New York City, it's not 5,000 or 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000. You're talking 150,000 kids just who are adolescents who are in trouble. I felt that, if we were gonna really change the conditions in that community, that we had to touch a large number of kids.
Now look, when we did it, we did it on faith. People have said it can't be done, that you're never gonna be able to sort of deal with the education and you're not gonna be able to work with kids at all of these different age levels, but we felt there was no alternative. Either we had to figure out how to solve this or we should get out of the business because we really weren't gonna save these children after all.
Tavis: So, Paul, I've worked with a lot of writers in my life and I have nothing but respect for the ones I've worked with. But when I read (laughter) the backstory on how you came to do this book and the time and energy you put into it, this was not just sitting down with a guy, turning on a tape recorder and getting his story.
You invested five years of your life engaging yourself really in this process to get to a point of being able to write the book. Tell me what got you excited or interested in wanting to dig into this and how and why you spent five years as the backstory to this text.
Tough: Well, I guess the reason that I got interested in it is just the questions that you're asking right now. When I first heard about the idea of a project that takes 97 blocks and tries to deal with every kid in that neighborhood, it just seemed different. It seemed like when I'd heard about people with poverty programs, they would be chipping away at one part of the problem or another part of the problem and what struck me was that Geoff wanted to do something really big.
The reason why I spent so long is just that - well, partly that I wanted to watch it unfold over time, but partly because it's a big project and I wanted to see all the different parts. I wanted to see the parenting program, the pre-kindergarten, the charter school and see how they all fit together.
Tavis: You're being very modest. Tell me more about what you did during that five-year period because you went down and spent some time here. So what have you done connecting yourself to this program over five years?
Tough: Well, part of what I did was sit down and talk to Geoff every couple of weeks and got his story. But I also went through - Baby College is the name of the parenting program, so I went through a couple of times. I spent a few years at the middle school that Geoff was starting, watching as they tried to get off the ground. It started in 2004, which was just about when I started my reporting. I spent some time in pre-kindergarten. There was a lot to do.
Tavis: All right, Geoff. Let me just break this down in pieces then. Tell me in layman's terms what the problem is for kids in inner cities. I mean, you work in Harlem, obviously. What's the problem? Let's dissect the problem, first of all.
Canada: Well, I think we've created a real culture of failure. When I say a culture of failure, it's that when our parents think they're often helping our children, they're actually teaching them the wrong things, so it starts literally from birth. We have parents who believe that children should be quiet, disciplined and orderly and that's what they want. They want that child to sit there and be quiet.
The brain of a child develops when they interact with the world and, if you're making that child sit there, you're actually stunting that brain development and that brain growth. No one's told our parents. They just haven't explained to them. This is the science. This is how we help young brains develop so that they can be ready to enter and get in school and compete on time.
Then the other thing we've done is, we created a great program for preschool and then we send the kids to a lousy public school and we think the kids are gonna be fine. Guess what happens? You spend all of that time on preschool, you send that kid to a lousy public school, you know what happens in two or three years? The child looks just like all the other children who are there. So we have made mistake after mistake after mistake.
A lot of times, we wait until a child is 15 or 16 and then we come in like superheroes and we try and rescue the child. It's possible, but it takes so much time and energy. Our theory is, get the kids early, get them on grade level and never let them get behind. That way, you can really maximize the chances these young people have. Now we don't give up on children who are adolescents. We run lots of programs for children who are adolescents, but we want to fix this thing. We want to solve this.
In ten years, when you come to Harlem, we want all the children to be doing good and for people to be trying to come to Harlem because the kids are doing so good that they want their own children to be part of that cohort of young people doing good. So this is about not tinkering around the edges, but really coming in and fixing this problem.
Tavis: How much does poverty impact or, for that matter, how much is poverty at the epicenter of the problem?
Canada: Well, you know, I think one of the interesting things in Paul's book is he really looks at a lot of the poverty work and sort of takes it to task and really examines the different strategies. Poverty matters. It absolutely matters.
If you're a parent who's struggling and you don't know whether or not you're gonna be able to pay your rent, having Geoff Canada come in and say, "Look, I want you to spend two hours a day focused on this child," you're overwhelmed. You're trying hard as you can.
It's just very difficult to raise a child. If you have two parents with money, nice conditions, grandparents with a lot of help, still raising a child is hard. You take all that away from a person and say, "I need you to spend all of your time focused on this child," it makes it really, really difficult.
So poverty matters, but it doesn't matter so much that it's impossible for those of us who really care about these families to help them figure out strategies to be successful.
Tavis: How do you explain, then - I want to go back to Paul about something in just a second here - how do you explain then, Geoff, the fact that kids who come from homes where they have means oftentimes - not all the time - but oftentimes end up doing better than kids who come out of impoverished backgrounds? How do you explain that?
Canada: Yeah, because that, you know, part of what we know young people need, they need to be surrounded by the tools that they're gonna come in contact with for the rest of their lives. So if you go into my 11-year-old's room, you go into his bedroom, he's got 300 books up there.
I buy him books every week, so he's growing up just understanding this is part of his experience. He's had every educational game, every educational toy. We invest huge amounts of money in our children just to try and keep them on grade level.
Now look, this kid is not like a genius. He's not going and setting records. He's just a regular kid doing well in school and it's cost me a lot of money to support that young person. So I make sure he's in great sports program, great arts programs, he can play music because we make sure he's in a good music program.
Well, you know what? In poor communities, lots of these opportunities are missing for children. A lot of times when that child is not in school, they are in front of a TV or a videogame learning nothing and that's when poverty actually exacerbates the problem because young people don't have the same opportunities more affluent people do.
Tavis: Paul, I wonder if I could get you to open up to me and tell me honestly - as if you would lie (laughter), but as a white guy, what your - I don't want to say misconceptions were, but what were your perceptions before you got to know Geoff and what do you now think looking back at this experience and having immersed yourself in it and written a book now? What do you think that many white people not in the inner city don't get about what Geoff is up against every day? Is that a fair question?
Tough: Yes, I think it is. Well, I think one of the things that changed the most in my thinking had a lot to do with parents. I'd heard from Geoff and I'd read that, you know, there are ways in which parents in poor communities are not preparing their kids as well as parents in middle class and upper middle class communities to succeed. They're not having the same kind of conversations; they're not buying as many books.
There are all sorts of things that those kids just aren't getting from their families. I think that I thought that that was something that couldn't really change, that those parents were not interested in learning a different approach. I've gone through Baby College a couple of times and I've found that the opposite is true.
It's definitely true that there are a lot of parents in Harlem who don't know a lot of the most cutting edge parenting research, don't know what sort of techniques work the best, but they absolutely want to know and they're really eager for this information. You know, they eat it up when they have an opportunity to change the way they do things.
Tavis: Tell me more - to Paul's point, Geoff, tell me more about the parenting issue. I want to come back to that because you're an expert and I am not, but I've spoken at enough schools and done enough speeches and immersed myself enough in this education debate to know one thing.
I don't know as much as you, but I know one thing for certain and that is that the schools that do best in this country, public, private, inner city, suburban, the schools that do best in this country are the schools where parents are involved. I don't care what the scenario is, if you can get parents involved, the schools end up doing better. Amen on that? You agree with that?
Canada: I absolutely agree with you.
Tavis: Okay. So since we agree on that, I'm glad it's something I said (laughter). So since we agree on that, then, back to Paul's point, tell me then what it is that you do and how it is that you do it to get parents who, before connecting with you, are not as involved, are not as interested. How do they end up being the kind of people that Paul was telling me do exist in Harlem?
Canada: Well, parents simply don't know how important their efforts are in their own child's education. We have a lot of our parents who have grown up poor who really believe it's the teacher's job and they think their job is to get their child to the school door and then the school will give them an educated child and that they are not really responsible for that child's education.
That's one of the things we really have to make sure parents understand. You are the primary instructor of your child and it is your job to make sure the teacher does their job, because typically this is what happens, Tavis. You have a kid; he's not doing well in school. The teacher calls the parent in and begins to tell the parent this, that and this other thing.
The parent has to know, "Excuse me, that's your job. You're the educator. You tell me how together we can work and make this thing happen so this child is successful." Then one of the other things I will tell you because it's my own parents, when you teach them well, they become pains in the rear end (laughter). I just had to tell you because it's true.
I know some of my parents are gonna be mad at me for saying this, but when you tell parents, "You must demand a great education for your child. You must demand that. You must go in and don't take no for an answer," you know what? After a while, you see that parent coming and you say, "Oh, God, I hope they did the right thing" and I'm calling, "Did you take care of Ms. Jones child? She's calling and on my case."
You really respond as a human being because this parent cares passionately and you think, "I don't care if any other child is getting an education, but her child is gonna get an education." That's why schools in which parents are really engaged work because those teachers know and the principal knows there's a price to be paid when you don't do a quality job because this parent cares about her child.
When you have parents who don't even show up to school, they don't sign the report cards, they don't come to Parent-Teacher Night, they never come in demanding anything, well, then, you feel like, "You know what? I'll do whatever and, if it's not that good, so what? Who cares?" So we've got to put that pressure back on the schools, the professionals, to know we care. We want to have our kids be successful and we will accept nothing less than that from the schools.
Tavis: Let me ask you a crazy question. I know there are a bunch of parents watching right now who have had this - I'm not a parent, but I have friends who have this experience all the time. I'm laughing on the inside because my mother and father had this issue back in the day and I'm past 40 now.
As I can only imagine what my friends are going through who have kids, which is this: that the kid comes home with homework that you couldn't help the kid with if you wanted to (laughter) and many parents want to. They will take the time after a long day to try to sit down with the kid. They don't know the stuff.
So I'm listening to you tell me, demanding an education, help the kid, involve yourself in the educational life of the kid. You don't know this stuff to help this kid if you wanted to, so what's a parent to do, Geoff?
Canada: Well, see, this is a great question because it happened to me with my 11-year-old. My wife and I, we worked out this routine. I'll come home from work and she'll say at the door, "It's photosynthesis." I'm like, "Oh, boy. That's like 40 years ago. Photosynthesis, right?" She stalls him and I go on the internet. Then I come back and say, "Son, photosynthesis. . ."
Tavis: (Laughter)
Canada: But this is where poverty matters. First of all, I learned about it, right? I had a good high school education. I learned about it. Second of all, I have the internet. I can go on. I know to go on that and share that. Suppose you have no internet and suppose you never even heard of photosynthesis? How do you help your child? This is one of the areas that we struggle in.
So here's some things parents can do. You can make sure your child goes to bed on time. You'd be amazed how many kids are sleeping inside schools. You can make sure that you go in and ask someone where you can find the resources to help your child because, look, you may not know photosynthesis, but if you go in and tell that teacher, "Look, can you tell me someplace where I can go and get help because he's struggling in Science?"
It is that teacher's job to give you some help and you as a parent have to make - if she don't help you or he doesn't help you, you go to the principal. You say, "Look, I asked for some help. I didn't receive it." Even though you can't do it yourself, you still make sure your child gets that help and support and then you make sure that that child goes and does whatever the extra help does.
Look, I'm gonna tell you, Tavis. Parents, listen to this. When something happens, you go to that school and, when nothing happens, you just go show up after school. You just go show up there. Go to that classroom. Let those people know you're concerned. Let that child know you're concerned.
You'll be amazed. You won't have to know photosynthesis. They'd be thinking, "I don't know. My dad may be coming by today," and that really matters to children when they think you care like that about their education.
Tavis: Yeah. As a kid, I learned that the hard way (laughter) "Hi, Mom." Learned that the hard way. Paul, I'm sitting and listening to Geoff talk about, again, this parenting issue that you got me into, thank you. Give me your sense of what you learned about the dedication of the teachers.
I ask that because I believe - I think we probably all do; I certainly do - that teachers are our country's greatest resource. They're just the most under-appreciated resource in the country.
Having said that, I also believe honestly that it ain't that some of these kids can't learn. It's just that some of these teachers can't teach and some of these kids are subjected in classrooms where teachers don't care enough - with all due respect to teachers - they don't care enough, they're not invested enough, they've grown weary of dealing with these bad kids every day, etc., etc.
Talk to me about what you ran into, what you learned from the teachers who have to be, I would assume, as invested in this process as Geoff is to make these results what they are.
Tough: Well, I think the teachers who are most successful that I've seen in Geoff's program and elsewhere are the ones who really think of what their job is as a partnership with parents, you know. I think the down side of the kind of thing that Geoff is saying is that I think some teachers and educators can say, "Oh, yeah, you know, it's all the parents' responsibility. Unless those parents are pains in the neck and they're doing all this, I can't be expected to really succeed with this kid."
But what I think the teachers and the principals in the Harlem Children's Zone do is that they take responsibility for making the parents take responsibility. So they really reach out and connect with parents and say, "This isn't something that I can do alone. This isn't something you can do alone. This is hard work. This is gonna be a big deal trying to get this child to the level he needs to get to. We've got to work together to do it."
Tavis: Across the country, the model is pretty much the same for how we fund education: taxpayer dollars. What happens, as you both know, is that taxpayers get to a certain age where their kids have gone through the system and they're out.
While we say education ought to be our number one priority, once your kids have matriculated through and they've gone to college and now they're parents themselves and you're grandparents, you don't care as much necessarily about that school system as you once did when your kids were engaged in it.
I'm trying to figure out how we get persons whose kids have gone through the process to still care about the education process, to engage and involve themselves about the process because, still, if we want a country that's ever gonna be, you know, as cutting edge as it ought to be, all of us, whether our kids have matriculated through or not, have got to be invested in this system. Does that make sense?
Tough: It does. I mean, I think that part of the reason why some people who don't have kids right now, say, in the system have kind of checked out and aren't paying attention especially to urban education is that they just haven't seen anything that works. They just feel like here's one reform, here's another reform, nothing ever really seems to change.
I think that the thing that people could do, parents could do in that situation, is just sort of look at some of these new models. Look at what Geoff's doing. Look at what some of the successful charter schools are doing. Once you start to realize that actually things can change, things are changing in lots of places, I think that people get much more involved and they're willing to invest in education much more than they would be.
Tavis: Geoff, what are the measurements for you? How do you, how will you know, when your model is delivering for you the kind of success that you want it to deliver?
Canada: It's all about the numbers. In the end, our children have to graduate high school and go on to college and you have to graduate college. That's how we define success and anything less than that is not gonna prepare our children for I think the kind of competition they're gonna face globally.
I've had a lot of people, you know, say, "Well, Geoff, you know some of the kids have emotional issues." I say, "Let them have emotional issues and a college degree. That's fine with me." You know what? Then I've done my job.
Tavis: Most of us do (laughter).
Canada: Most of us do, and that's no excuse. You know what? The challenge that we face, Tavis, is that unless we fix this, unless we fix this, we are going to end up bankrupting our country. You cannot continue to have as a strategy in lots of places in America an investment in jails and prisons that cost you $35,000, $40,000, $45,000 a year and think that that's the answer to how we're gonna compete with places that are actually growing the number of doctors, engineers, lawyers.
I mean, we have people who understand that right now this is a war not of how many tanks you have, but how many engineers you produce, and we're still investing in the back end of a system instead of in the front end of the system where we can make sure all American children can go out here and keep this a great nation.
Tavis: I've got 45 seconds left. You tell me, Geoff, whether or not - back to the book, "Whatever It Takes" - whether or not you are hopeful that we can do whatever it takes and will do whatever it takes be enough, given what we're up against.
Canada: Yes. You know what? We can change this. We can absolutely create a totally different kind of environment for our young people to grow up in this country. I think there are some people who are really starting to understand that this is about what we do as adults, about what parents do, about what teachers do.
It's about how we hold everybody accountable. Teachers, principals, all of us have to be held accountable. I've said that, if people can't do the job, they don't need to work in this field. Make some room for somebody else who's prepared to come in and do whatever it takes to see that these children make it.
Tavis: Geoff Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone has been written about in a variety of places and talked about at all kinds of conferences and seminars and symposiums, but has not been given the kind of treatment that Paul Tough gives it in this new book that I highly recommend to you. It's called "Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America." Geoff, thank you first for your work and for your love and your service. I appreciate you for it.
Canada: Thanks so much, Tavis.
Tavis: And, Paul, I'm glad you wrote this book for us to learn more about what Geoff's doing. Thank you.
Tough: Thank you.
Back to September 26, 2008