Literature

Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America

SU students have been invited to read Paul Tough's Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America as an introduction into the 2010-11 Academic Salons theme. This book, as well as a number of other readings, have been carefully selected as catalysts for dialogue throughout the year. Paul Tough's book follows Canada's creation of the Harlem Children's Zone as a way to tackling the problem of urban poverty in America.

Discussion Questions

1. Having read Paul Tough’s book about Geoffrey Canada and take some time to consider how you yourself ended up here at Seattle University, what have been the primary resources for your success?
2. What do you consider to be the most effective programs developed by Geoffrey Canada to target underserved youth in urban areas ?
3. Which of the programs have been the most difficult to institute for the youth in Canada’s target schools?  What ways can these difficulties be alleviated?
4. The Harlem Children's Zone began through large financial donations.  Paul Tough’s book notes the tremendous pressure that Canada and his staff were under to produce “results.”  What are the primary methods that Canada’s program utilizes to measure student success for donors?   Have the student measures of success and assessment through testing proven adequate?
5. Geoffrey Canada refers to the process of supporting children from baby college through high school as a “conveyor belt” method.  Do you think that there are any limitations to this process? What are its primary strengths?
6. Paul Tough notes that  "social science is notorious for attributing social ills not to the inequities of society but to the moral failings of the poor." In what ways does the story of the Harlem Children’s Zone resist this notion?  What are some of the most compelling stories you found in this book?
7. How much knowledge and cultural literacy must a person have to serve diverse communities?  Do our schools teach students and staff to not only appreciate diversity but work in diverse locales?
8. Canada believes that through the efforts of the Harlem Children’s Zone students will be able to remain in the neighborhoods throughout high school and return after college to develop urban neighborhoods. What are the benefits of such a vision and are there any limitations?
9. Paul Tough asks his readers, "What would it take to change the lives of poor children not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in a programmatic, standardized way that could be applied broadly and replicated nationwide"? After reading Whatever It Takes, what do you think the answer to that question is?

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