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.
The US education system doesn’t have: follow-through. According to Chapter 8 of Outliers, “Rice Paddies and Math Tests,” the research of rice paddies has created a cultural legacy among Asian cultures that leads to more relative success for people from those cultures. Malcolm Galdwell argues “That lesson has
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In Asia, people believe all the hard work will lead to profits through the experience of growing rice paddies. According to the writer, this argument is not limited to the rice paddies but continues over the experiment of the math tests. For example, Gladwell introduces a story of Renee. Renee is Alan Schoenfeld’s, a math professor at Berkeley, student. He considers Renee different. When Renee meets a problem she does not know, she will not stop until she is absolutely sure she has it right. Renee’s studying spirit helps her to succeed during studying. It is based on a function of persistence and doggedness. However, under the US education system, students are not good at focusing on one thing. Gladwell ends by noting the result of the test called TIMSS, the difference between how Asian and American students learn math is the emphasis on effort and hard work. This doggedness is not …show more content…
According to Chapter 9 of Outliers, “Marita’s Bargain,” Gladwell introduces a public school called KIPP Academy. Students are chosen by lottery. Half the students are African Americans, the rest are Hispanic. However, in KIPP, their teaching methods are different from other US schools. KIPP students spend almost every second to study. Their students are spending fifty to sixty percent more time learning than the traditional public school student. This is the reason why poor kids can also be as clever as rich kids at KIPP. According to Gladwell, the reason that Asian students are more intelligent in math is because they do not have such long summer vacations. Asia’s culture believes “the route to success lies in rising before dawn 260 days a year are scarcely going to give their children, three straight months off in the summer” (260). Therefore, Asia’s school year is almost 243 days long. They believe people have the time to learn everything they need rather than just stay there and unlearn it. However, under the US education system, students have 180 days long summer vacation. Gladwell believes the length of time of students studying is why Asian students are successful in math. In my opinion, increasing the study hours is the fastest way to open a gap between students studying. In Stand and Deliver, in order to improve students’ math skills in a short time, Escalante spends extra time tutoring students all the
My father, like many Asian immigrants, left India to pursue his educational goals in America in order to provide a better life for his family. He arrived in the U.S. with fourteen dollars in his coat pocket, a suitcase in his hands, and a will to succeed. For my father, in a place like America where opportunities were plentiful and where hard work actually paid off there was no excuse not to succeed. The practical translation of this belief meant that if his children worked hard in school there was nothing they too could not achieve. As such, in my father's household, not doing well in school was not an option.
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
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell expresses his theory of success through the 10,000 hour rule that is used to associate practice with success and achieving certain goals. He strives to influence the audience of his point of view and assumptions of successful people throughout the history of the world. Gladwell relates to various historical figures and people of well known talent and intelligence. As the author, Malcolm Gladwell believes to be very knowledgeable, influential throughout the novel. Although he provides interesting facts and statistics to his piece, Gladwell is unable to establish credibility to this information. During college and high school, he did not attain high grades that altered his decision to engage in advertising. After being rejected numerous times, he was later accepted to a journalism position. His insufficient experience and skills contributes to his low credibility and reliability. Gladwell aims to persuade or influence the audience of the importance of practice to fulfill success by also trying to teach the reader new skills. He reaches out to society to capture his inspiring discoveries including young adults in particular who are aspiring to grasp their desired dreams. He introduces the 10,000 hour rule as a goal to reach around the age of twenty or higher. Gladwell compares the lives of professional hockey players, Bill Gates, the Beatles, and Mozart to display their achievements in their later lives due to the amount of experience and practice they were able to endure. He claims that with exactly 10,000 hours of practice, expert level will be sustained in any given skill. Although Gladwell expresses his knowledge and theories of success through devices that exemplify logos and repetition of the 10,00...
Malcolm Gladwell is a canadian-english journalist, speaker, and bestselling author. In his bestselling book “Outliers”, Malcolm Gladwell discusses success and what patterns correlate with it. He states that how much time you put into a certain activity, specifically 10,000 hours, can put you in a elite level of proficiency. This in turn can give someone the tools to allow them the ability to be successful. Using historical citations, patterns, and real life examples, Gladwell forms his 10,000 hour rule. Due to his knowledgeable yet calm tone Gladwell seems to show credibility. His intended audience could be people who enjoy statistics or people who want to be successful and find possible ways to do so. Gladwell uses a logical appeal to show the patterns he has found through his studies of success. He supports his claim with overwhelming statistics which back it. He also uses similes to help better understand how he can relate the patterns he has found for the elite in a certain activity to other things. Foil is probably Gladwell's best means of convincing the reader to his thesis of the 10,000 hour rule. He uses Foil to compare success and we define to legends such as Bill Gates The Beatles and Bill Joy. Overall Gladwell uses Logos, similes, and foils to support his claim of the 10,000 hour rule.
Imagine a book that offers the reader a key; a key that enables them to ride down the highway to success and see all of the stops along the way that are instrumental in achieving success. Malcolm Gladwell does precisely this in his novel Outliers, which examines some of history’s most successful people and then attempts to explain why they specifically became successful beyond their wildest dreams. Gladwell is a reporter for The New Yorker and an accomplished author in the areas of psychology, sociology, and social psychology. In Outliers, he presents his reasoning as to why some people become successful and some do not. One of his major points in this regard is the ten thousand hour rule, meaning that to master a topic and become extremely successful in that area, one must accumulate at least ten thousand hours of practice in that area. He closely examines the early lives and careers of some of history’s greatest success stories to make a fine argument for his case. However, his strong arguments in support of his theories on success are not as strong when they come to countering the “typical view”, as Gladwell sees it. Outliers is different than most persuasive novels in that by proving his point, Gladwell does not necessarily disprove other people’s view on success. He effortlessly utilizes logos, along with numerous examples and parallelisms to support his theories. However, his lack of ethos and strong counter-argument allows for the audience to understand his ten thousand hour rule without necessarily supporting it wholeheartedly. After proposing something unthinkable to the average mind, Gladwell goes on to explain his ten thousand hour rule theory using two, very descriptive, very in-depth anecdotes. He shows how multi-bil...
Success has a different meaning for every person on Earth. The majority of people define success as an individual’s “attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence” (Success). In accordance with the rest of society, Malcolm Gladwell defines success as an individual’s accumulation of “a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities” given by the environment to help a person succeed in the business world (Gladwell 155). Advantages come in the forms of birth dates, learning styles, work ethics, demographic luck, and job needs. Similarly, opportunities given by the environment circulate around a person’s ability to complete “ten thousand hours… of greatness” (41). Before reading Gladwell’s book “Outliers: The Story of Success”, I would have complied with society’s and Gladwell’s
The importance of cultural legacies is very prevalent throughout chapter seven of Outliers. The chapter, “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes”, discusses the history of Korean Air and the unbelievable number of plane crashes the company had throughout the 1980’s and 90’s. The author, Malcolm Gladwell, then goes on to investigate the causes of the crashes and more specifically the cultural traditions that cause the accidents.
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.
“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).
Asians are one of fastest growing minority groups in America today. During this century, various factors at home and abroad have caused people from Asia to immigrate to the United States for better or for worse. Due to these factors, Americans and American teachers, in particular, need to educate themselves and become aware of the Asian American students’ needs in terms of success and happiness. Before beginning my research, I felt I had an easy subject: studying Asian Americans in relation to their education in public schools. How simple! Everyone knows they are smart, hard working, driven to succeed in spite of their nerdish, geeky, non-athletic, broken-English stereotype. Of course they are successful and happy! Why wouldn’t they be?
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
We all understand what success is, but what allows for a person to become successful? Malcolm Gladwell wrote his book Outliers to study this topic and settle once and for all why some people are more successful than others. Gladwell uses the success stories of people throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to discover just exactly what it is that allows for one to be successful. He explains that there is much more to becoming successful than just natural talent and skill. Gladwell states in Outliers that success is the product of the time we were born, our dedication, and most of all where we come from.
“A statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample” (Gladwell 3) or in other words an outlier. In the novel Outliers: The Story of Success, author Malcolm Gladwell holds one of the many secrets to life, the secret to success. Gladwell takes one’s thoughts on an astonishing journey to reveal the keys to success, their patterns, and how to achieve it.
President Ronald Reagan once described America as, “A Nation at Risk,” He was addressing this statement to the education department thirty years ago and meant it as a wake-up call. He was aware that the United States was falling behind in education and needed to take action in order to prevent the demise of the country. Reagan correctly predicted the grim fate of America if education did not see improvement. Today, research finds that American education is failing to provide the necessary skills to succeed in college and various careers. The quality of education in America is a growing issue and every year graduate students are finding it more difficult to obtain high paying jobs and start his or her career. According to studies conducted globally, the curriculum in America is not as advanced and years behind international schools in countries such as China and Japan. There is much controversy in government over what can be done to reverse the situation in public schools but possible solutions that have been suggested are hiring more qualified teachers, more classroom time, and investing more money into education.
Education is an integral part of society, school helps children learn social norms as well as teach them how to be successful adults. The school systems in United States, however are failing their students. In the world as a whole, the United States is quickly falling behind other countries in important math and reading scores. The United States ranked thirtieth in math on a global scale and twentieth in literacy. This is even more true in more urban, lower socio-economic areas in the United States. These schools have lower test scores and high dropout rates. In Trenton Central High School West, there was an 83% proficiency in literacy and only 49% of the students were proficient in math. Many of these students come from minority backgrounds and are often from low income families. There are many issues surrounding these urban schools. There is a severe lack of proper funding in these districts, and much of the money they do receive is sanctioned for non-crucial things. Schools also need a certain level of individualization with their students, and in many urban classes, this simply does not happen. While there are many factors affecting the low performance of urban schools, the lack of proper funding and distribution of funds, the cultural divide between teachers and students in urban districts, along with the lack of individualization in urban classrooms are crucial reasons to explain the poor performance in these districts. Through a process of teacher lead budget committees and further teacher education, urban schools can be transformed and be better equipped to prepare their students for the global stage.