Argumentative Essay On Outliers Gladwell

Have you ever wondered how some people have come from nothing, a dark past that will surely set them up for failure, to live a remarkably successful life that they built on their own, while others are born privileged but fall far short of reaching their full potential? Many people believe that the answer to success is simply hard work. In Outliers, Malcom Gladwell believes that success is not achieved by the smartest or the hardest working but is simply a gift. He argues that although hard work and determination are necessary for success, social standing and certain advantages are the true aspects that create an outlier. This nonfiction book examines the many factors that influence whether an individual will find success or failure and uncovers certain explanations and patterns behind these everyday

occurrences that the average person looks past. Its conversational style makes it easy to read and helps the reader connect to the stories within it. Although this book does not have a specific intended audience, it is best fit for an audience of young adults, adults, or anyone who appreciates and wants to learn more about the opportunities of success. Gladwell uses many intriguing examples to help support his argument, each of which contain their own strengths and weaknesses.
Gladwell begins the book with a short introductory story that explains what it means to be an outlier. Throughout the rest of the book, he summarizes the road to success in two main points, opportunity and legacy, and within these points he provides supporting evidence using short stories. In part one, factors such as an individual’s natural IQ, date of birth, background or upbringing, opportunities presented to them, and willingness to work hard in the face of adversity are used to support Gladwell’s argument that people cannot become successful on their own, but they receive advantages and help from others along the way. Part two demonstrates the influences of someone’s ancestors on how they react to certain situations and how their culture determines how assertive they are, and what type of skills they will process.
The first example in part one is a story about the level of success in hockey players. Gladwell opens the chapter by describing how young boys rise to the top in Canadian hockey through their natural talent as a child, and once they get scouted, their own hard work and dedication to the sport. Gladwell writes, “Success in hockey is based on individual merit – and both of those words are important. Players are judged on their own performance, not anyone else’s, and on the basis of their ability, not on some other arbitrary fact. Or are they” (Gladwell 17)? After illustrating the fact that anyone can make it with talent and hard work, he begins his efforts to convince the reader that we owe our success or failure to “hidden advantages”, “extraordinary opportunities”, and “cultural legacies”, and that people do not rise from nothing. Tables including the roster information of multiple successful hockey teams is included to point out that the majority of hockey players were born within the months of January through April. He explains that this is because Canada’s eligibility cut off for age class hockey is January 1, implying that there is a possible one-year age gap between the two young players, and at only nine and ten years old there is a major advantage of physical maturity for the older player. Therefore, the bigger more talented player will certainly be chosen to play for the more talented team, granting that player with access to better coaching, competition, and more playing time. In the beginning, his advantage is small, but as he gets older his chances are much greater to make it on a Junior League Team, and eventually to professional hockey.
Gladwell’s first argument is well thought out, and very reasonable. He is very convincing as he explains that the date of birth is an important factor in the success of a hockey player, and it is easy to see his points within the hockey team roster tables. However, this study was based of someone else’s work, and he never explained how the studies were conducted or even if they were reliable. Gladwell may have been more successful in illustrating his argument if he would have gathered the birth dates of all hockey players in the junior leagues and the big leagues. He could have furthered his example by including what percent of these players had birth dates that fell into the months of February through April.
Another idea that Gladwell covers in the book is the 10,000-hour rule.

He argues that people cannot become experts of their craft before they spend a certain amount of time practicing. After giving the reader a summary of the up rise of successful people such as Bill Joy, Bill Gates, and The Beatles, he explains to the reader that each one of these successes received and extraordinary opportunity that led them to the top. For example, Bill Gates was given the opportunity to accumulate thousands of hours of programming because he was one of the very few people that had access to the necessary computer lab. He became obsessed with programming and that was nearing the only thing that he did as an eighth grader up until his senior year of high school. And when the time came to start up a company, Gates had more programming experience than the competition, way over ten thousand hours. The Beatles were just as fortunate as Gates when they were invited to play in Hamburg, Germany. They played in the strip clubs seven days a week, eight hours a day, accumulating hours of playing time and chemistry between them that they might not have been able to find anywhere

else.
“By the time they had the first burst of success in 1964, in fact, they had performed live an estimated twelve hundred times. Do you know how extraordinary that is? Most bands today don’t perform twelve hundred times in their entire careers. The Hamburg crucible is one of the things that set the Beatles apart” (Gladwell 50).
Gladwell argues that without Hamburg, the Beatles path may have looked very different and they may have been less successful.
This chapter was an interesting read and it is easy to see that each success story was greatly influenced by the amount of experience that was accumulated. However, Gladwell makes it seem as if the 10,000-hour rule is this magic number that you must reach in order to become successful. This idea seems to be a large generalization and is a little bit of a stretch. Practice is obviously very important if you want to become successful but there are many factors such as age, IQ, and natural talent that outweigh it. The type of practice also should be accounted for in his argument. Successful people practice in a way that that is purposeful and dedicated to making improvements. This chapter also revealed that Gladwell may have drawn the wrong conclusions about some of his examples. Many of his subjects, such as Bill Gates, were truly geniuses, a fact that he seems to downplay.
Gladwell also argues that cultural is a major deciding factor in what level of success an
individual will reach. In addition to the fact that most other languages allow people to store longer sequences of numbers, due to their short pronunciation, he uses the idea of rice paddies as a link to why Asians are good at math. Rice paddies take an enormous amount of work and care to create a healthy crop and in China or Japan, farmers didn’t have enough money to buy equipment or extra land. In order to increase their yield, they had to become smarter, making better use of their time and effort. Gladwell writes, “Throughout history, not surprisingly, the people who grow rice have always worker harder than most any kind of farmer” (16). Farming rice not only takes a remarkable amount of labor, but the farmer must also care about what they are doing to have a successful yield. He references a study in which a woman was video-taped trying to solve a math problem. At first, she didn’t know the answer, but she never gave up. She experimented, showed persistence, and never stopped until she got the answer right. Gladwell relates this to the fact that being good at math is dependent on how much you care and practice. He claims that cultures that have been shaped by traditions such as rice paddies and meaningful work are more likely to excel in mathematics.
Gladwell’s argument that certain cultures have advantages in mathematics is very interesting and persuasive to the reader. For example, the advantage of shorter syllables in the pronunciation of numbers within the language of certain cultures seems very logical. This chapter also is a good example that hard work and the willingness to prevail will lead you to success, an idea that he falls flat on in the rest of the book. However, his conclusion about Asians and math seems is a little farfetched. Gladwell seems to be illustrating that because Asians worked hard to grow rice, they must work hard when doing math. He is implying that math and rice farming is the same line of work, which they certainly are not.
Outliers is an entertaining book that captures the reader’s attention and forces them to look at success from a different perspective. Gladwell is an intriguing writer and provides an interesting view on why some people become outliers, far more successful than the vast majority, while others never reach their full potential. He passionately argues that people don’t come up from nothing but are influenced by hidden factors. After reading this book, it is clear that there are many opportunities, advantages, and cultural legacies that determine who a certain individual is, and who they will become.