Hope and high expectations

An interesting coincidence. I am reading Tim Harford's The Logic of Life, The Rational Economics of An Irrational World. A bit dated but some very good material. One of the points he makes is about the delicacy of systems. In particular, he uses the example of African American students, believing that college is beyond them, essentially abandoning any effort to achieve college, ending up with a self-reinforcing cycle of failure and despair. They think they can't get to college, therefore they don't try, therefore they don't get the grades they need, therefore they don't get into college, therefore they don't try . . .

Harford doesn't address it directly but several of his case studies have the unstated lesson that effort in the face of obstacles sometimes delivers its own miracles. Sometimes the rational is insufficient and you have to make your own reality. There is a corollary lesson related to expectations. Sometimes higher than reasonable expectations actually generate their own higher than to be expected results.

In this morning's New York Times there is an article, One Man’s Millions Turn a Community Around in Florida by Lizette Alvarez.

Two decades ago, Harris Rosen, who grew up poor on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and became wealthy in the Florida hotel business, decided to shepherd part of his fortune into a troubled community with the melodious sounding name of Tangelo Park.

A quick snap from the city’s tourist engine, this neighborhood of small, once-charming houses seemed a world away from theme park pleasures as its leaders tried to beat back drugs, crime and too many shuttered homes. Nearly half its students had dropped out of school.

Twenty-one years later, with an infusion of $11 million of Mr. Rosen’s money so far, Tangelo Park is a striking success story. Nearly all its seniors graduate from high school, and most go on to college on full scholarships Mr. Rosen has financed.

Young children head for kindergarten primed for learning, or already reading, because of the free day care centers and a prekindergarten program Mr. Rosen provides. Property values have climbed. Houses and lawns, with few exceptions, are welcoming. Crime has plummeted.

This is the passage that resonated with the research being reported by Harford.

Sitting with his feet propped up on his old, weathered wooden desk, Mr. Rosen, 75, fit, trim and not given to formalities (his shelter dogs are known to wander about the room), said the program was rooted in an element absent in many American neighborhoods.

“Hope,” Mr. Rosen said. Why devote countless hours to school if college, with its high cost, is out of reach? “If you don’t have any hope,” he added, “then what’s the point?”

Hope and high expectations. I keep coming across those themes.