Originally Posted by cym
Gladwell's discussion of birth dates and hockey don't have relevance to academic acceleration. Most sports are by age until high school, at least what I've seen. If sports is a serious pursuit than yes, bigger, stronger, faster, older may be a deterrent to acceleration. But I thought Gladwell was purely pointing out the "outlier" of birthdate as one unlikely factor of success in hockey (the typical factors considered are coach, how many yrs played, etc.).

I do think Gladwell's arguments do have relevance to acceleration because he shows that talent MUST find a fertile environment to grow. He compares a failed genius to Bill Gates and the difference was environment. He also notes that Bill Gate's mom and the other parents advocated and supported their kids' desires from the get-go. There is little difference between the hockey examples ( talent, environment, parental support) and that of Bill Gates.

Gladwell's motivations are made clearer in the Audio version of the book as there is an interview he gives plus there is an epilogue. Its quite interesting as you learn something of his past. There are also some lectures he gives on youtube.

If Gladwell were to survey the GT field, he would very quickly note that the majority of GT kids are falling through the cracks because there is no identification, no environment to support them, and the vast majority of parents are ignorant or just do not care.

For example, when I was 8 years old, my best friend was Prez. The one thing we shared was a love of was football and we met while playing on an elite team. I had an advantage in that I could read and he could not. So I would read the sports section to him during breaks at practice. One day he asked me to teach him to read. He learned to read VERY fast. That summer his dad came in his room to ask what we were doing. He had the sports section open and a dictionary and we were reading. "Learning to read, Pop." was his comment. His dad exploded,"Whatcha wanna do that for? So you can be better than your dad!!!" and that ended it. In my memory, Prez was very bright - he had to be to be my friend.