Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion 'Outliers', anyone reading it??

I love this book. I went to a Jr. High and High school that would (by today's standards) be considered low-performing. I now teach in a low-performing Middle/High School.

I always questioned why some of the "smart" kids in my high school never did anything with their brains. Sociology classes answered some of these questions, but "Outliers" really helped.

I taught at a Community College last year and tutored there as well. Most students did not read or complete their homework. They were so upset that they were failing. However, there is a huge Mongolian population and they always show up prepared - even though they have trouble with English.

I spoke to one of them about math (my subject). He said that they all do their homework. Their sixth grade math is like the College Algebra so they sail through that class while most drop out or fail it. I asked about the students who were not so smart. The answer is that they study also. This is cultural because the parents enforce it daily. They cannot do anything else until they complete their homework - contributing to their 10,000 hours.

This may explain why most of my eighth graders cannot tell me the circumference of a circle.

Sorry to be so very late to this discussion but... I bought Outliers for my hb for his bday and he loves it. He's only up to page 43 but he's already quoting it as if it is gospel. Without having had a chance to read it myself, I'm a little concerned with what sounds like a fairly convincing argument against acceleration based on how close the person is to the cut-off age. Of course, this comes after 12 months of researching and seeing specialists who advised us to grade skip and subject accelerate even though our daughters are both June babies (meaning they only just make the age cut off which in Perth is June 30th). What did others make of Gladwell's acceleration argument? (-and how can I convince hb to get out of this particular tree!!!)

jojo

I liked some of what Gladwell had to say, but giggled through the acceleration argument. Like so many other things, it's true enough for the middle two thirds of folks, but falls apart at the tails. I think that Gladwell acknowledges that some level of inborn talent must be there, a 'nescessary but not sufficient' ingredient.

I'm sure that once you've read the book you'll figure out how to poke holes in his arguments. For example, he makes the case that Hockey players who are on the best teams get more time on the field, when your daughters are properly placed, then their school time 'counts' towards that 10,000 hours, when they are kept below their 'readiness level' the time they spend in school doesn't get them any closer to competence, and it encourages them to not even bother. For your family, the gradeskips signal to the girls that 'working hard' is more important than 'getting praise for no effort' and that makes them more like 'rice farmers' - the last thing Gladwell would argue for is putting a child into a situation where their efforts are totally unhitched to the feedback they recieve.

If it gets really bad, you'll have to send Gladwell a fan letter and take it up with him!

Smiles,
Grinity

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.).

That's right -


Jojo -we're in!

gladwell's argument only applies to situations where different levels of early identification lead to different access to resources (like a skating rink)

School is completely different, the access to learning is distributed without regard to ability. In fact, if one is high ability, then their access to 'meaningful' learning opportunities is severly limited unless they are accomidated.
((high five Cym!!))

His point is that by being in the right place for whatever reason, places a student into an accelerated path. Having an advocate, oh.. such as one of the parents on this website, is one of the advocates of which he was speaking. I see this all the time. I have a student who I just recommended to GT. His mom works at Wal-Mart and neither parents are very involved.

Entitlement helps. Many parents would never dare request "privileges" for their child. Those who do, give their child a chance to be in a different category instead of languishing.

I really prefer a gifted or pre-ap classroom instead of a skip. The older students get; the worse their attitude is. I really wanted my daughter to not be around those students and catch that attitude until she was older. So far, her principal has some great ideas for the gifted students and she can be around "interested students".

In your situation, that might be the best thing. But I think often a skip is really preferable.

I never liked his use of the term 'entitlement' - these things a lot of the time aren't privileges, they are needs. Mom used to call this moxy - picking up the phone when you get a rejection letter or something similar and asking questions. Just to find out more, to do better next time, sometimes these conversations turn rejection letters into wait-list letters, and so-on. Sometimes politely inquiring why you didn't get a job is the ticket to doing better in the next interview, or the reason the HR person saved your resume for 'next time' rather than file it for 'never'.
I do this for my kids now, but I show them and explain what I am doing so they learn (hopefully).

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.

Some of my son's gifted, public-schooled friends have talked to me about not feeling supported in their small town school and about teachers not caring if they wanted to learn more than what is going to be on the tests. They are all in band now and I think that is the one place where they do feel supported.

One of my son's friends called to tell me that the band was going on a two day trip that was going to be really fun. They did well at their audition and their pictures were in the paper and he wanted to know if I saw it. I listened to him and congratulated him, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about how I had thought several years ago that I could fight the school, that I could do something to change rules that don't require an appropriate education for twice exceptional students and that I could somehow get the school to allow my son to at least participate in band. His friends told us a few months ago about how the band kids played cards together at lunch time and when I said I didn't think they would let him skip grades the friend who is three years older said he thought they would have to put him in the same grade as him because he is so smart. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. There is no doing what is best for the child at our school.

My homeschooled son doesn't get to take band. He doesn't get to go to lunch with kids. Instead he gets to eat lunch with his grandparents and me. He gets to watch me scream when my mother sneaks up on me and pinches me and he gets to see his grandfather slap her hand when she pinches and won't let go. But my son is so very adult like in dealing with all of this. He researched and learned all kinds of things about neuroscience, brain injury and behavior. He knows that brain damage caused his grandmother's behavior. He even finds it interesting and amusing. He knows that sometimes there is a choice between laughing and crying and he almost always chooses to laugh. He is more of an optimist than I am and even more so now that doctors told him yesterday that they want to hold off on having him wear a brace for scoliosis for three months to see if there is any change. He told us afterward that his glass was back to half-full again.

I care. My son's friends' parents care, but is it enough?

My son's computer is next to mine and he doesn't play games all the time in his free time. Yesterday he was looking at politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/ and one of the things he read to me when I asked what he was looking at was "McCain said Obama called Sarah Palin a pig. My son laughed and said "Hmm, I wonder what she smells like." Most kids his age who do not watch the news would not know that he was trying to make a joke about the government's pork barrel spending and pig odor research. But the older gifted kids in his children's musical theatre group did. He felt supported there. I have noticed that most of the musical theatre kids are outside-the-box and proud of it and I think this is good for him, but most of the people in town would rather see football than Annie. They put so much work into putting on a good show and they all notice that most of the audience is made up of relatives of the kids. Even their teachers at school don't bother to go to their shows but won't miss a football game.