An excerpt from Paul Tough’s Whatever It Takes:
“Canada wanted to find a way off the treadmill. So he asked himself a series of questions, and gradually his thinking took shape.
Who did he want to help?
He wanted to help poor children.
What was his goal for them?
He wanted them to be able to grow into fully functioning participants in mainstream American middle-class life.
What did they need to do to accomplish that?
They had to survive survive adolescence, graduate from high school, get into college, and graduate from college.” (Tough 4)
Paul Tough’s book, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, charts Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone and the opening of Promise Academy in Harlem. It is clear from the book that Canada views a college education as essential to creating responsible citizens. By providing them with a nurturing environment in Promise Academy, Canada intents to teach the value of both a high school and college education. By encouraging students to enjoy learning, he attempts to create a revolution within his community in Harlem.
What is interesting about Canada’s approach is that instead of simply educating his students, he teaches them to enjoy learning and value education. Valuing education is a quality linked to the middle class. Canada refers populations of his students’ parents that have a “middle class set of aspirations” (108). Canada points to a college diploma as the best ticket out of poverty, but what if a university graduate is unable to secure a job? Is graduate school the new ticket to the middle class?
