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Book Review According to The New Yorker, “Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996… He is the author of three New York Times best-sellers: “The Tipping Point,” “Blink,” and Outliers” (Author Malcolm Gladwell). One of Gladwell’s three best-sellers is Outliers: The Story of Success. Outliers is a book that describes the traits of successful people. Instead of focusing on the traits that most people do, such as intelligence, personality, and ambition; he focuses on traits such as their culture, experience, and their family. Outliers are people who achieve more than the average person, but according to Gladwell intelligence alone is not the way to achieve it. He believes that there are many other factors that contribute …show more content…
He emphasizes that there is no need to be naturally talented but with practice success can be achieved. “The students who would end up the best in their class began to practice more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight hours a week by age twelve…by the age of twenty, the elite performers had each totaled ten thousand hours of practice”(Gladwell 38,39). According to Gladwell, practice plays a major role in success, not only the people who are naturally talented can be successful but also the individuals who work hard enough for it. Gladwell also argues that more hours in school are rigorous programs can lead to a higher success rate among students. In his last chapter he describes how a school in New York City called KIPP has overcame all expectations by creating a desirable school even though it is in a low-income environment. This school has longer days resulting in the teachers not having to rush through material. A student named Marita is a middle schooler who wakes up at 5:30 AM and doesn’t go home until 5 p.m. Gladwell argues that students like Marita could be successful because they take the opportunities given to them. Marita has to give up most of her time in order to attend to KIPP, but she will most likely attend college in the future because her school is preparing …show more content…
“How could that be a bad bargain? Everything we have learned in Outliers says that success follows a predictable course. It is not the brightest who succeed. If it were, Chris Langan would be up there with Einstein” (Gladwell 267). Chris Langan, according to Gladwell, has currently the highest IQ; he is a genius but cannot be influential. Gladwell describes him as a genius without social intelligence. Langan did not finish college, he only went for a year and a half, accusing the school system of being unfair and calling schools such as Harvard “glorified corporations” (Gladwell 96). Another example he gave is Bill Gates, he described him as a successful person because he had the luck of having spent more than ten thousand hours as a programmer. His high school had a computer club in which he spent most of his time, when he had the chance to use his programming abilities he was already an expert because of his previous experience. Gladwell gave more reasons why a person could be an outlier, including birthdate, diligence, and rigorous schedule during childhood. All these can result in a person being an
Malcolm Gladwell, in the nonfiction book Outliers, claims that success stems from where you come from, and to find that you must look beyond the individual. Malcolm Gladwell develops and supports his claim by defining an outlier, then providing an example of how Stewart Wolf looked beyond the individual, and finally by giving the purpose of the book Outliers as a whole. Gladwell’s purpose is to explain the extenuating circumstances that allowed one group of people to become outliers in order to inform readers on how to be successful. The author writes in a serious and factual tone for the average person in society of both genders and all ethnicities who wants to become successful in life.
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that there is no such thing as a self-made man, and that success is only the result of a person’s circumstances. However, throughout the novel Gladwell points out that your circumstances and opportunities only help you become successful if you are willing to take advantage of them and work hard. From a twelve year old living in the Bronx, to those who were born at just the right time to become millionaires, one thing is the same throughout; these people because successful because they seized the opportunities they were given. The advantages and opportunities that came from their circumstances would not be important if they had not grasped them. Every successful man is self made, because he has seized the
“Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have faith in the people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them”. This quote perfectly conveys Karen Ho’s perceptive that is present, in her article “Biographies of Hegemony”. In her article, she provides another understanding of intelligence. She uses the case of Wall Street workers and their personal and educational backgrounds to make her case. “Implicit in this transformation from undergraduate to investment banker is Wall Street's notion that if students do not choose Wall street postgraduation, they are somehow “less smart”, as smartness is defined by continued aggressive striving to perpetuate elite status” (Ho 18). Ho’s conception of the educational system has been narrowed down to the social norms that society places. Smartness is merely associated with individuals who go to the best Ivy League Schools, medical schools, law schools, and etc. If a student is attending such institute they
Anti-Intellectusim: Why We Hate the Smart Kids, author Grant Penrod argues that intellectual kids are not respected in today’s society. Although he makes a valid argument with some good points, he bases his statements off of his high school experiences. In reality, the world is much different after high school. His idea of intellectual kids not being praised in society is false. This idea can be compared to the false idea that upper social classes are treated worse than middle and lower classes. Kids with high intellectual abilities are valued and can be compared to the upper social class with its access to many privileges.
Gladwell gives differing definitions of intelligence. Yet his definition of success is singular—"worldly" success in terms of wealth, power, and fame. Are there also differing definitions of success that Gladwell doesn't consider? If so, what are they, and what does it take to achieve those versions of success? What is your definition of success, and how does it compare to Gladwell’s? Has your definition of success changed at all?
For generations, only certain people have achieved success - they are known as geniuses or outliers; however, they did not obtain it on high IQs and innate talents alone. In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell, #1 bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Blink, reveals the transparent secret of success behind every genius that made it big. Intertwined with that, Gladwell builds a convincing implication that the story behind the success of all geniuses is that they were born at the right place, at the right time and took advantage of it. To convey the importance of the outlier’s fortunate circumstances to his readers, he expresses a respective, colloquial tone when examining their lives.
The standard way of thinking about knowledge in general, is that it is based solely on IQ scores, academic grades, and the amount of education received. Through this cultural belief, intelligence and formal education—and in that, professions that require post-secondary schooling—go hand-in-hand. However, this school of thought also seems to dictate the notion that “work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence.” The scholar, Mike Rose, makes point on this in his 2009 article, Blue-Collar Brilliance, where he asserts his position in contrast to these stereotypical views, arguing that working class occupations actually involve a lot more intellect than given credit. As Rose himself put it: “Although we rightly acknowledge…the play of mind in white-collar and professional work, we diminish or erase it in…physical and service work”. In comparison, the late novelist David Foster Wallace, would too probably contend against such a prejudiced notion, though under a different circu...
“People don't rise from nothing....It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't”(Gladwell 18).
His anecdotes presented in the article are appropriate in terms of his subject and claims. The author responds back to the naysayers by saying that people only look at the test scores earned in school, but not the actual talent. He says, “Our culture- in Cartesian fashion- separates the body from the mind, so that, for example we assume that the use of tool does not involve abstraction. We reinforce this notion by defining intelligence solely on grades in school and number on IQ tests. And we employ social biases pertaining to a person’s place on the occupational ladder” (279). The author says that instead of looking at people’s talent we judge them by their grades in school or their IQ score, and we also employ them based on these numbers. People learn more each time they perform a task. He talks about blue collared individuals developing multi-tasking and creativity skills as they perform the task they are asked to
Is it better to be book smart or street smart? Is it better to be happy and stable or unhappy and ‘rich’? Blue-collar jobs require you to learn skills that college cannot teach you; Rose points this out in his essay, stating: “It was like schooling, where you’re constantly learning” (277). In the essay “Blue Collar Brilliance” written by Mike Rose, he talks about how his mother worked as a waitress and how his uncle Joe dropped out of high school, eventually got a job working on the assembly line for General Motors and was then moved up to supervisor of the paint and body section. Rose suggests that intelligence is not represented by the amount of schooling someone has or the type of job they work. In this essay I will be explaining why Rose
Malcolm Gladwell makes many debatable claims in his book “The Outliers”. One of these controversial topics is brought up in chapter three when he talks about a person’s IQ and how that relates to one’s success. Gladwell says, “The relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point. Once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage.”After reading “Outliers” I believe that this is the greatest controversial topic. I agree with Malcolm Gladwell because there are a high amount of people who are not incredibly smart that are very successful, success can be viewed differently by different people, and from my own experiences on the U-High
In “Hidden Intellectualism”, author and professor Gerald Graff describes his idea of what book smarts and streets smarts actually are. He details how new ideas can help to teach and build our educational system into something great and that perhaps street smarts students could be the factor that traditional education is missing that could make it great.
According to Gladwell, Langan was extremely brilliant, “In school, Langan could walk into a test in a foreign-language class, not having studied at all...he could skim through the textbook and ace the test.”(71). He had an IQ of one ninety-five, which compared to Albert Einstein who had only a IQ of one fifty is quite an enormous difference. Even from the early youth, Langan was smart and could pass any test in any academic subjects by skimming through the textbook once. Not only in academics was he talented in but, also in drawings and guitar playing as well. As stated in the book “Without a degree, Langan floundered… He worked on a sprawling treatise he calls the “CTMU”... But without academic credentials, he despairs of ever getting published in a scholarly journal”(95). Langan seemed that he would be a multimillionaire in spite of his high intelligence and ability to perform, however he ended up not obtaining a college degree resulting into working middle class jobs. During the time Langan was not in school, he would continue his studies and tried to publish journals about his finding but since he did not have a degree, he could not publish them. Due to unfortunate events such as his mother not sending the scholarship at all, his teachers at Reed and Montana State were not sympathetic towards him in anyway possible so Langan could not finish school and get a college
When Gerald Graff was younger he and his friends would have various debates about sports including what team had the best pitcher in baseball. Graff pointed out that while having these arguments with his friends, they would have evidence to support their thoughts whether it be using statistics to find batting averages or using their argumentative abilities in general to support their opinion. This proves that even people who do not do the best in school are capable of brilliant things, the school system just needs to encourage students to use their hobbies to enhance their academics. Instead of dividing the different forms of intelligence, book and street smarts could merge and grow into a more detailed educational system that can help not just with academics, but with life itself. While it is good to know proper grammar, knowing about dating, sports, or cars can actually get people farther than anticipated in life. Graff thought that in the school system, street smarts is perceived as less than compared to “book smarts” which are encouraged in school. If the two forms of intelligence were to merge instead of separate, the educational system can transform into something
In Chapter 8 and 9 of Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell exams some of the ways that Asian and American students learn math, arguing that some of the principles in the US education system should be reconsidered. I generally agree with Gladwell’s point of view. I believe in two ways, students ' principal spirit and the length of students’ studying, the US education system leaves much to be desired, though an overhaul is in progress.