In his non-fiction fiction* “The Social Animal”, David Brooks writes:
“Researchers have spent many years exploring the jungles of the human mind in search of the source of ambition…Ultra-driven people are often plagued by a deep sense of existential danger…Highly ambitious people often possess some early talent that gave them some sense of distinction… There’s a common prejudice that ambitious people are driven to surpass their fellows, to be better than everybody else. In fact, most ambitious people are driven to achieve membership in some exclusive group or club.”
In describing the fictional success of an Academy in educating inner-City youngsters, Brooks says: “Fixate on whole cultures, not specific pieces of poverty. No specific intervention is going to turn around the life of a child or an adult in any consistent way. But if you can surround a person with a new culture, a different web of relationships, then they will absorb new habits of thought and behaviors in a way you will never be able to measure or understand. And if you do surround that person with a new, enriching culture, then you had better keep surrounding them with it because if they slip back into a different culture, then most of the gains will face away.”
The above paragraph describes both the goals of Project Forward Leap and an important lesson learned over the years: Intervention had to continue beyond the middle years through high school if gains were to be retained and youngster to go on to college and universities.
*His use of various fictional characters is simply a device for Brooks to report on studies over the past decades concerning how our sub conscience mind functions.
