At the beginning of chapter three, Gladwell tells the story of two extremely intelligent people who have high IQs — Christopher Langan, who many call the smartest man in America, and Lewis Terman, a professor of psychology of Stanford University and his group of young geniuses called “Termites.” A special thing about Langan that Gladwell talks about is, if Einstein has an IQ of one fifty, Chris has an IQ of one ninety-five. He has become the public face of genius in American life, he gets invited on many news, shows, and he has been the subject of a documentary by the filmmaker Errol Morris, all because of his brain. Once, a neuropsychologist gave Langan an IQ test, and his score was literally off the charts — too high to be accurately measured. He was speaking at six months of age. When he was three years old, he would listen and follow the announcer read …show more content…
He worked his way through Principia Mathematica at the age of sixteen. Gladwell has pointed to the misconceptions of many people about genius through the story of Lewis Terman. After he met and tested IQ of a remarkable boy named Henry Cowell, Terman was fascinated when he found out that Cowell had an IQ of above 140, which is near genius level. He began to look for other “diamonds,” and he found so many more genius, his “Termites.” But, Terman made an error, he was wrong about his Termites, and he didn’t understand what a real outlier was. Gladwell explains Terman’s error at the end of this chapter, he also highlights the special tests for geniuses, such as Raven's Progressive Matrices — it requires no language skills or specific body of acquired knowledge, it's a measure of abstract reasoning skills through pictures, a typical Raven's test consists of forty-eight items, each one harder than the one before it, and IQ is calculated based on how many items are answered
“Remember when we had to actually do things back in 2015, when people barely had technology and everyday life was so difficult and different? When people read and thought and had passions, dreams, loves, and happiness?” This is what the people of the book Fahrenheit 451 were thinking, well that is if they thought at all or even remembered what life used to be like before society was changed.
“Lord Zaroff,” announced Wilfred in a husky and dead tone, “the guests will be arriving later today.” Wilfred proceeded to open the curtains allowing light to pour in like a trembling river, making darkness crawl into the corners of the room, reaching for the ceiling so it wouldn’t drown.
In his article, “None of the Above: What IQ Doesn’t Tell You about Race” journalist Malcolm Gladwell refutes the notion that intelligence is based on genetics and argues that IQ is not just based on an individual’s level of thinking but also on the location where an individual resides. In 1984, James Flynn discovered that over the years, the IQ of people around the world had been increasing by three points per decade. This is now known as the Flynn effect. The IQ fundamentalists around the world believe that IQ score shows an individual’s level of thinking and it is based on genetics. However, Flynn effect disproves this
Fahrenheit 451 By: Ray Bradbury Life may be confusing to you when your job is to commit arson to any house that has a book in it. At least that's the way it was for Guy Montag. Guy Montag was a fireman and in the future, a firefighters job wasn't to stop fires, but it was actually to start them. In the future, books were known as bad and shameful and if anyone had possession of a book whether it was in their house or in another person's house, then the house was to be burned.
He professes: “We set out to determine what a child knows in order to tailor instruction, but we frequently slot rather than shape, categorize rather than foster. And the poorer the kids are- the less power their parents have- the more likely are their chances of being, as Lillian put it, hurt about their intelligence.” This portion of the passage really stuck out to me for many reasons. In this part of the passage I am brought back to the beginning of the book when Rose, himself, was put on the remedial track because his file was misplaced with another individuals file; Rose’s parents had minimal education themselves, didn’t know what to say or do in the situation. If the test would have been used to tailor and shape, the teachers would have known that he wasn’t supposed to be on the vocational track. Also, this reminded me of the ACT and SAT testing, a common standardized test that is used for college acceptance. The American education system relies on the test to show the intelligence of a person when all the test accomplishes is how well a person can
David and Goliath is the story of a young shepherd whom lacking of any kind of combat training, managed to overcome a giant, who was sophisticated in combat tactics, just using his wit. In modern times, that act is used as an analogy to compare people who against all odds overcome a difficult situation in their lives.
In “ Blue Collar Brilliance” Mike Rose argues that intelligences can’t be measured by the education we received in school but how we learn them in our everyday lives. He talks about his life growing up and watching his mother waitressing at a restaurant. He described her orders perfectly by who got what, how long each dish takes to make, and how she could read her customers. He also talks about his uncles working at the General Motors factory and showed the amount of intelligence that was need to work at the factory. Rose goes on talking about the different types of blue-collar and how he came up with the idea that a person has skills that takes a lot of mind power to achieve.
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.
Gladwell discusses a study done by Lewis Terman, a psychology professor at Stanford University. Based on IQ tests given to elementary school level students all around California, Terman selected the brightest students to track and analyze, These students were known as the “Termites.”
The North Korean government is known as authoritarian socialist; one-man dictatorship. North Korea could be considered a start of a dystopia. Dystopia is a community or society where people are unhappy and usually not treated fairly. This relates how Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 shows the readers how a lost of connections with people and think for themselves can lead to a corrupt and violent society known as a dystopia.
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
At Canadian hockey games, players’ birthdays, in addition to names are provided on a pamphlet to attendees, yet the fact that “...there were an incredible number of January, February, and March birth dates” (Gladwell 22) is not widely known. Also, “‘...A mature scientist with an adult IQ of 130 is as likely to win a Nobel Prize as is one whose IQ is 180.’” by the logic of “A basketball player only has to be tall enough--and the same is true of intelligence. Intelligence has a threshold” (Gladwell
“Hidden Intellectualism” written by Gerald Graff, is a compelling essay that presents the contradicting sides of “book smarts” and “street smarts” and how these terms tied in to Graff’s life growing up. Graff felt like the school was at fault that the children with more “street smarts” were marked with the reputation of being inadequate in the classroom. Instead of promoting the knowledge of dating, cars, or social cues, the educational system deemed them unnecessary. Gerald Graff thought that “street smarts” could help people with academics. In his essay, Graff confessed that despite his success as an “intellect” now, he was the exact opposite until college. Where he grew up in Chicago, Illinois, intelligence was looked down upon around peers
Lewis Terman created the IQ tests that many schools used to test student’s intellect capacity. This test caused many students to only be taught how to work in factories rather than learning material that could get them into better careers.
1. The author indicates the importance of the number 451 and the fireman's job by saying "With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head" and "He tapped the numerals 451 stitched on his char-colored sleeve."