An Educational Success People are not just handed success or just magically get it, or do they? In the words of Malcolm Gladwell “The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot”(19). In the educational system people are at an advantage, some born into it and others practice for it. As Gladwell points out in Outliers, to succeed in this educational system you need to be born at the right time, have social skills, and have equal opportunities. With your education, you cannot put a time limit upon it. …show more content…
A teacher of Oppenheimer recalled that “he received every new idea as perfectly beautiful” (97). Someone noticed him. Unlike Langan’s parents, Oppenheimer’s thought he was a genius. Oppenheimer now has two things over Langan, teachers’ and parents’ support, and lest not forget communication skills. As time went on Oppenheimer went to harvard than Cambridge University, from there he grew unstable. He tried poisoning his tutor, this plan did not succeed and he was brought in. Instead of being punished he was put on probation. Both faced with a problem, Langan not getting his scholarship and Oppenheimer trying to poison his tutor (98). In both scenarios they had to plead their case in front of authority, Langan failing and Oppenheimer getting probation, to be considered a slap on the wrist. Langan had failed, one after another and thus succumbed to defeat. Meanwhile Oppenheimer continued on, he went on to work on the Manhattan Project. But how could someone who tried to kill his tutor get this job? As Gladwell puts his, “Oppenheimer understood that Groves guarded the entrance to the Manhattan Project, and he therefore turned on all his charm and brilliance. It was an irresistible performance” (99). His charm, or silver tung got the world to see his point of view, he had the social skills. If Oppenheimer was is Langan's shoes he could have probably gotten his scholarship back and also been able …show more content…
The 10,000 Hour Rule, this rule states that if you practice for more than or equal to 10,000 hours than you have mastered that skill. If schools surrounded this idea than they would be able to have all their students master all of the topics. Instead of picking out the mature ones or advanced one, they can focus on teaching every child the right way and having them master all the topics. Like I said earlier in this essay Denmark does not separate kids until the age of ten. For the first five years of their life they can be practicing this 10,000 hour rule because no one is being separated for being better than another student, they can all have an equal advantage until the age of ten, no one better or worse. Gladwell aconogents that,“The students who would end up the best in their class began to practice more than everyone else”(38). Even though you will not reach 10,000 hours of practice in every subject by the age ten, you will be at the same level as your peers, no one at an advantage, all equal. It is up to the individual after the age of ten to continue and practice to be better than everyone else, it is now up to the
I found Gladwell’s first chapter of Outliers entitled “The Matthew Effect” to be both interesting, confusing, and perhaps somewhat lopsided. Based on Matthew 25:2, Gladwell simply explains, “It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given to the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success.” (Gladwell 2008, pg. 30) The Matthew Effect seems to extend special advantages and opportunities to some simply based on their date of birth.
In the second chapter of his book “Outliers: The Story of Success,” Malcolm Gladwell introduces what he believes to be a key ingredient in the recipe for success: practice. The number of hours he says one must practice to obtain expert-level proficiency in a particular skill is ten thousand hours. He goes on to list several examples of successful individuals and makes the correlation between the amount of hours they practiced their skill and when they achieved expert-level proficiency (almost always around ten thousand hours of practice). While the magic number appears to be the main focus of the chapter when it comes to success, Gladwell seems to put more emphasis on the advantage and opportunities each individual experienced. However, I believe the determining factor that distinguished their successful careers was their drive, passion and dedication to put in the hours necessary to turn those unique opportunities into success.
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
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.
In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers he writes about how success comes from a numerous factors from extra opportunities that can open doors to genetic advantages that can be the difference in edging out competition. An “outlier” that I am quite familiar is my uncle Travis Knight. He is an obvious outlier because he stands at 7 feet tall and played basketball at the University of Connecticut and he played in the National Basketball Association for 7 seasons. His professional career was a result of many of the topics Malcolm Gladwell discusses, Early advantages often result in increased coaching or placement in accelerated programs which means more experience and significantly more practice than those who do not have the same opportunities.
The article “How to Be a Success” by Malcom Gladwell speaks about how success is something that can be achieved if you put the time and work into it, and how success is not achieved overnight but rather through long hours of constant practice. His article is targeted to more than one group of individuals. The groups of individuals that his article targets are teenage students, young adults, adults, people who want to become an expert, or want to succeed in something they have an interest in and in general society. Another article also related to the success of an individual “An A+ Student Regrets His Grades” by Afraj Gill describes how in society many schools focus more on students’ grades, rather than their learning, and how a student is
It’s considered a rarity now days to walk down a major city street and not come across a single person who is fighting to survive poverty. The constant question is why don’t they go get help, or what did they do to become like this? The question that should be asked is how will America fix this? Over the past year, Americans who completed high school earned fifteen point five percent more per hour than that of dropouts (Bernstein, Is Education the Cure to Poverty). According to Jared Bernstein, in his article “Is Education the Cure to Poverty”, he argues that not only do the poor need to receive a higher education, but to also maximize their skill levels to fill in where work is needed (Is Education the Cure to Poverty). Counter to Bernstein’s argument Robert Reich expresses that instead of attempting to achieve a higher education, high school seniors need to find another way into the American middle class. Reich goes on to say “the emerging economy will need platoons of technicians able to install, service, and repair all the high-tech machinery filling up hospitals, offices, and factories” (Reich, Why College Isn’t (and Shouldn’t Have to be) for Everyone). Danielle Paquette, though, offers an alternative view on higher education. Paquette gives view that it doesn’t matter on the person, rather it’s the type of school and amount of time in school that will determine a person’s
“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).
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
What would happen if our world today was monotonous, sorrowful, and grey? What if no one was here to form new creations, and think of bold ideas? Would triumph have a definition? Would there be outliers in our world today? We are constantly thinking, always generating new ideas and forming new thoughts. People even proceed by creating inventions, and building objects no one would of thought would be made today. But, what we don’t perceive is how they became successful and how they took advantage of the moment that was given to them. In the novel, Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, the author explains that an outlier is one who is given an opportunity and knows how to take advantage. He believes that in order for a person to be successful they need at least ten thousand hours of hard work and effort in order to succeed at a skill. It is clear to me that like Malcolm Gladwell, I believe
Malcolm Gladwell’s overall purpose of Outliers: The Story of Success is that success is largely determined by an individual’s socioeconomic and sociocultural environment, and individual ambition, effort, or talent, are less significant, contrary to the societal notions associated with success. In other words, success is not something that someone randomly gained; success is earned through opportunities that develop dedication, interest, and skill over time. By doing this, will one become an outlier, or “something that is situated away or classed differently from a main or related body,” (Gladwell 3) that distinguishes great from good and best from great, as exemplified by “The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that the and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals”, musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did.” (Gladwell 39) Gladwell also acknowledges societal norms such that “All of the fourteen men and woman on the list above had vision and talent,” (Gladwell 62-63) to assert hard work, ability, et cetera can lead to success, but a social environment that offers such opportunities immensely increases the likelihood of success.
Once in a while, it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to. Gladwell believes that cultural legacies are powerful forces. Cultural legacies are the customs of a family or a group of people, that is inherited through the generations. According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, Cultural legacies is something that’s been passed down for generations to generations. It depends on what type of legacies was passed that will affect a person. If a good legacy was passed down, someone can keep that legacy going by trying hard at keeping the legacies going. If a bad legacy was passed down; I believe that cultural legacies can be altered or changed, by good working habits, determination, and a positive mindset to succeed. Culture can affect either positively or negatively, but we have the power to turn our cultural
If people work hard, focus, and are disciplined, they will succeed in the future. This has become a universal idea taught by parents, teachers, and peers. People have passed down this idea to the younger generations and they chose to live by this moral that makes sense. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell debunks the universal idea that working hard will allow people to play hard and get further in life. Gladwell eliminates the traditional ideas of success by showing that opportunities, family background, and being born at the “right” time are actually what lead to success.
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.