The Awful Nude

*another paper for class*

In The Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell presents the idea that there is no “self-made man” and that the biggest successes in the world did not rise from nothing. He presents cases such as The Beatles, Bill Gates, and John Rockefeller as evidence. In his findings, legacy and opportunity are more crucial to success than talent and hard work. Hard work does play a role, but only for those who already have a distinct advantage over others.

First of all, let’s get one thing clear: Gladwell is not a scientist. He is not a sociologist, an economist, or a psychologist. He is a journalist. The field of journalism seems to be allowed to have the most bias of any today. Journalism isn’t required to present every bit of data, particularly that which doesn’t support the conclusion one hopes to achieve. If a journalist sees a problem in an institution, he is allowed to suggest a fix without bothering to figure out if the fix is feasible or suggest a way to go about it. Gladwell’s conclusions, most of which seem obvious to me, and I’m neither a scientist nor a journalist, are based on small bits of anecdotal evidence that he’s cherry-picked to support his worldview.

Early on, Gladwell presents the scenario of youth hockey leagues in Canada. The sport is played in the winter, so those boys born between January and March have a distinct advantage over those born in October. There is a wide gap in physical maturity there for 9-10 year old boys, and the older ones tend to play better and have a better shot at getting noticed by the higher level youth leagues and later the National Hockey League. Therefore, however talented a kid born 10 months later might be, he might not be developed enough to play at the same level and has a disadvantage caused by accident of birth (Gladwell, 2008, Chapter 1). This would seem to be obvious to anyone who played sports at a young age, particularly in my case as I had a summer birthday and most school sports are played during the school year. The kids playing soccer who had birthdays in September and October had a physical advantage over me. Plus I lacked any talent whatsoever, but Gladwell seems to almost throw talent out the window throughout his writing.

Along with sports, Gladwell presents the case of schools and emotional/mental maturity. Someone like me supposedly had a disadvantage by being younger than most of my classmates of the same grade. Never mind test scores (which I tended to do very well on) or study habits (which I’m not always so great on), I apparently had a disadvantage compared to others because I was born in late July, according to Gladwell. His suggested solution to this problem is to have a staggered school year, so that those born in the summer, for example, would actually start their school year in the summer. He also offers the same suggestion for youth hockey leagues, having two or three of them based on month of birth. He goes on to say that “It would be a little more complicated administratively. But it wouldn’t necessarily cost that much more money…” (Gladwell, 2008, Chapter 1).

I’m not sure if Gladwell ever played sports or actually looked at how education systems work or the funding of said systems, but this would actually be a logistical and financial nightmare. Many public school systems are understaffed and underfunded, and many taxpayers would be hard-pressed to want to pay more than they already do. Take a look at the high school in the rural area of Lake Crystal, MN. For many years, the high school was in an old, rundown building badly in need of repairs and more funding. Referendum after referendum was introduced for years, from prior to when I attended to several years after I graduated, and was voted down because there weren’t enough people willing to pay the tax increase. Now tell them they need to pay for the increase in facilities and staff to have three different groups of each grade level. The only scenario in which his suggestion might be feasible is in expensive private schools. Parents of those students are already willing to pay a lot of money for their children’s education, and could probably be convinced to pay more if it would help them do even better. The problem there is, that further separates the low and middle classes from the upper class in advantage from a young age. This solution also doesn’t work in the case of sports because some sports shouldn’t be played year round, especially given the area they are played in. Try having a track meet in the middle of January in Minnesota, or have a bunch of kids put on football equipment in June in Mississippi and play for four quarters. But again, Gladwell doesn’t actually have to present anything that goes against his conclusions, because he’s a journalist, not a scientist or any other kind of researcher that is required to present all the data. Even supervisors and managers in any kind of business need to be able to offer a reasonable solution to a problem, and they need to be able to back it up with how to go about it feasibly (Leonard, 2010, pp. 150-175).

One of his most obvious conclusions is that mastering a skill takes a lot of work. I mean a LOT. It supposedly takes 10,000 hours of practice to master anything. Really, Gladwell? Almost no one can just pick up a guitar and start playing like Jimi Hendrix after a little bit of tinkering? Get the New York Times on the line, because everyone needs to know this. Not only does someone need the hours of practice required to become a Jimi Hendrix or Bill Gates, they need the opportunity. In Gates’ case he only got the chance get as much programming experience he did because he happened to end up going to a forward-thinking private school that actually had access to a time-share computer in the late 1960’s and a community that was willing to fund said access. That kind of access at that time was almost unheard of, especially in a high school setting. His practice there led him to other opportunities to practice, and so on, and now everyone is using Microsoft products. Gladwell’s conclusion from this is success is as much based on opportunity as skill and work ethic (Gladwell, 2008, Chapter 2). Again, get the New York Times on the phone….

I get why this book has gotten the attention it has. In a time where most people in our country are glued to either CNN or Fox News, and Al Gore is lauded with praise for An Inconvenient Truth (ironically for the fact that it only includes data that conveniently fits what Gore wants to say), this kind of biased “research” is the norm as far as public consumption goes. For anyone who can look at a situation objectively and actually knows a little bit of how the world works (and came to the same obvious conclusions of skill vs. opportunity years ago) or what they are talking about (school systems and sports programs), however, this book should be discarded as the trash it is.

References

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success [Kindle version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

Leonard, E. (2010). Supervision: Concepts and practices of management. Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning.