A Young Troubadour Encounters Homeschooling

This post reviews Philip Brand, The Neighbor’s Kid: A Cross-Country Journey in Search of What Education Means to Americans (Capital Research Center, 2010).

Brand, a young staffer at the Capital Research Center, a conservative non-profit best known for its opposition to labor unions and environmentalists, here recounts his experiences during the 2008-2009 school year when he and his brother took a road trip that led them across the entire United States four times.  In route he visited dozens of different kinds of schools, including several homeschools.

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Tough on Replicating Middle Class Homes for the Poor

This post reviews Paul Tough, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008).

Tough, an editor at the New York Times Magazine and widely published journalist, here pens a fascinating book chronicling the reform efforts of Geoffrey Canada, an African American visionary who has been working for many years to transform Harlem.  The book is an engaging blend of first person reportage of Canada’s efforts among the urban poor with research reviews of some of the most significant scholarship on urban poverty, child-rearing, and education.  In this review I’ll briefly summarize Canada’s approach in Harlem and then focus on what this book has to say about the importance of home life for a child’s educational success. 

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