Paul Tough’s recent cover story in the New York Times Magazine titled What if the Key to Success is Failure? makes a strong case for the importance of character in education. With masterful style, he tells how two educational leaders  of very different schools have collaborated to help their students develop character.

The article has rightly garnered attention and reaction from major news outlets and influential thinkers. Tough has touched a nerve. He has put into words what others feel.

Paul Tough is the author of Whatever it Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America. The brilliance of that book is the second chapter: Unequal Childhoods (although the whole book is fantastic). In Unequal Childhoods he chronicles the importance of what happens in the home long before children enter school. And he wisely recognizes that perhaps the cornerstone and linchpin of the Harlem Children’s Zone’s success is its Baby College with engages and empowers parents from before birth.

Here is the pressing question: If the earliest years are so critical for brain building that the achievement gap exist long before children enter school, is it possible that the same is true of character? Could it be that a child’s character is significantly formed in this period? Could it be that the formation of character in the earliest years is at the very heart of the education crisis?