HowChlidrenSucceed.docVIP

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character. By Paul Tough. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 256 pages; $27. Random House; ￡12.99. Buy from A, Amazon.co.uk《孩子怎样能赢：持之以恒，好奇心和性格中隐藏的力量》，作者Paul Tough，霍顿?米夫林? 哈考特 （ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ）出版社：全书256页，售价27美元；兰登书屋，售价12.99英镑。美国和英国亚马逊有售。THE young teenagers who graduated from a special South Bronx middle school in 1999 became nationally famous. All black and Hispanic and largely from low-income families, the students had been recruited four years earlier to participate in an experimental programme called KIPP (ie, the Knowledge Is Power Program), designed to close the achievement gap between privileged and poor students. The experience seemed to pay off: in a citywide test, these students earned the highest scores of any school in the Bronx, and the fifth-highest in all of New York City. Most won admission to top high schools, often with full scholarships. They all seemed destined for college, and for successful, precedent-bucking, demographic-defying lives.1999年毕业于南布朗克斯的一所特殊中学的青少年闻名全国。他们都是来自低收入家庭的西班牙裔黑人，四年前被征集参加了KIPP实验项目（即“知识就是力量项目”）。该项目旨在缩小富裕家庭和贫困家庭的学生成就间的差距。试验似乎取得了成效：在布朗克斯市的所有学校中，这些学生的分数是最高的，在整个纽约市排名第五。其中大多通常以全额奖学金被顶级高中录取。看上去，他们注定了会上大学，注定会一直过着成功的生活。But six years after their high-school graduation, only about a fifth of KIPP’s first class had completed a four-year college degree. Most ended up dropping out, reaffirming America’s growing class divide on college campuses. KIPP’s founders were distraught, particularly because a college degree has never been more valuable, enabling Americans to earn some 80% more than people with only a high-school diploma. So how had KIPP failed to prepare these students for college? What did they do wrong?然而，在他们高中毕业的六年后，KIPP最好的一批学生中完成了四年的大学学业的仅有五分之一。大部分人最终辍学了，再度证实了美国大学校园里的等级分化在日益增长，KIPP的创始人对此感到忧心如焚。造成这种情况的主要原因就在于大学学历的含金量不如从前，曾经大学文凭的美国人比仅有高中文凭的能多赚80%左右。那么为何KIPP项目没能使这些学生完成大学呢？他们做错了什么？Paul Tough, a journalist and former editor at the New York Times Magazine, aim