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

So far a pretty fun read, I am about half way through. Not sure how much of it I completely buy, but the idea of circumstance/chance and plain old practice playing such a massive massive role in whether people get by, much less hit their potential, is very interesting.
The sports team info is jaw dropping.

At the same time the authors sort of states that iq can be easily negated by these other factors he also vindicates the parents/community efforts to make the circumstances meet a child's potential.
The tooth and nail fights many of us have to get our kids into a program where they are not bored out of their skulls does indeed appear to be the thing to do, at leat according to this one author/book.

http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Stor...mp;s=books&qid=1227360296&sr=8-1

I could use more charts/data, but it is certainly thought provoking.

Curious if anyone else is reading this.

I saw this about Outliers today and am adding it to my library list.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/11/21/malcolm.gladwell/index.html

Since I have a background in aviation, I'm especially interested in learning more about this:
Which countries?!

Hi Chris,

My DS14 just read it and thought it was a very interesting book. DH then started reading it and said it was "right up {my} alley". I really enjoy Malcolm Gladwell. I have it on my bedside table in the giant stack of books I want to read.

Cym

I'm also half-way through. One thing that the author is not stressing but implied, is that talent is necessary, too (whether IQ is the same as talent, well, I won't go there). For example, he talks about the "10,000 hours" rule being somewhat true for music students in conservatories: those who practise harder will be better musicians. But the fact that these students are already in a prestigious conservatory means that they are all talented. Same with the hockey story. The talented ones need the right circumstances to thrive, it doesn't mean that *anyone* will be a hockey star given the right circumstances. I think he actually said in the book that what he is advocating is for "the talented" to not miss out.

Anyway, I'm really enjoying the book. And I am also happy that, according to this book, we parents who are doing everything we can to find a good match between our kids and the educational environment are really helping our kids.

Well, I borrowed the book from a friend, and am through the introduction.

DS12 wants to know what all the fuss is about.

I told him that it says that it takes more than high IQ to succeed, that one needs hard work too.

DS12 cracked up. Really? He said sarcastically, I though one could sit in a room playing video games the whole time.

I can hardly wait to get deeper into the book and hear what DS has to say about the rest of it.

Smiles,
Grinity

I'm with Grinity's DS12 - the book seems to me a nice corrective to a straw man.

Well, maybe not a total straw man. I suppose that there probably is a tendency in our society to think that once you've quantified something you've found its essence. And insofar as the point of Gladwell's book is that a high iq isn't sufficient for success then I suppose it works against that tendency. But still, my impression was that Gladwell's talent lies in taking a not-very-deep point and writing very well about it.

That said, there is a deep question in the area. Namely, if iq doesn't measure success - and perhaps isn't even a very good measure of intelligence itself - then what is? The book that seems to me to address that issue head-on and in an interesting way is Thomas Flynn's What is intelligence?. Has anyone read that one?

Flynn is the psychologist after whom the "Flynn Effect" was named. The Flynn Effect measures the rise in mean iq scores relative to a given normed sample from 1947 to the present. (It also retrodicts a pattern back to 1900 or so.) Flynn argues that the effect - an average increase of 0.3 iq points per year - shows either that iq isn't measuring pure intelligence or that our grandparents were all mentally retarded (the phrase he uses). He prefers the former explanation to the latter.

The crux of the discussion is organized around the various ways in which social factors enter into one's success on the tests. There is an interesting discussion of re-norming, and of the history of the various revisions to the WISC and SB, and he attempts to explain why the aptitudes they test for are so much easier to come by in the general population now than they were 100 years ago. All this leads him to resist the idea that cross-generational comparisons tell us anything about relative iq, while still insisting that within a generation they can be relatively effective. There is a heartbreaking discussion of how scoring an exam relative to obsolete norms can artificially inflate the iq scores of death-row prisoners, some of whom become eligible for execution as a result of the mistake.

I'm not at all sure what I think of Flynn's new proposed model of intelligence (which has iq as one factor), and I'm not even sure what I think of his explanation of the Flynn Effect in the first place. But the topic overlaps with Gladwell's book considerably, and I felt that I was in the hands of a much more interesting and insightful thinker.

I'd love to know if anyone else is reading this book, and if so what their impressions are.

BB

I have not read either book, but your review made me want to read both, BBDad. Very interesting! Thanks!

I'm so glad you found it helpful, Kriston. I'm busy avoiding a deadline (3.5 hours now - argh!), so it's nice to know that at least some avoidance strategies can be productive...

BB

LOL! I wish I had no idea what you mean (said the woman who could be writing...).

I got it on cd for my dad for Christmas (he drives a lot), but it didn't arrive on time... I thought it sounded intruiging. I'll pop it in the car tomorrow!

Meh, I wanted to stay as far away from that book as possible after I read that he thought the reason for Asian kids' success is that their parents farmed rice paddies.

I just started reading it, and have been skipping through and reading a few pages here and there until I get a chance to read the whole thing.

I liked this: "The middle-class parents talked things through with their children, reasoning with them. They didn't just issue commands. They expected their children to talk back to them, to negotiate, to question adults in positions of authority" and "The heavily scheduled middle-class child is exposed to a constantly shifting set of experiences. She learns teamwork and how to cope in highly structured settings. She is taught how to interact comfortably with adults, and to speak up when she needs to."

I read that part while I was at my son's four hour long rehearsal. My son and the rest of his children's musical theatre group will be performing at a downtown New Years Eve celebration. I was wondering if it was all worth it, listening to the teacher yelling at the kids and telling them that she had made every one of them cry at some point and she could do it again if they didn't look professional. The third time they ran through the show, my son's voice cracked as he sang a solo part and without thinking, he smiled and looked at me. She yelled that it was not funny. They are not supposed to break character. She yelled a lot at the 5 year old who got tired and cranky after only two hours of non-stop rehearsing with no breaks.

But I realize that he and most of the other kids have learned to deal with the yelling and are able to calmly express their needs and are able to negotiate with her while looking her straight in the eye. They have learned to "talk back" without being disrespectful and I think this is a valuable skill.

I read it before Christmas. Lina, I was uncomfortable reading the last part of the book too. I was suprised he went there.

The stereotypical "all asians are good at math" combined with an explanation that it's pure ethnocentric behavior over any natural inclination towards aptitude was a little strange,,,,,,IMO.

After I read it I was all: "NO he di int...."

I did enjoy the book until about halfway through. I would describe it as intellectual pop culture lite.


I enjoyed reading Blink and The Tipping Point much more. Ultimately I prefer Steven Levitt's writing style a little more for this "genre" of book, Freakonomics was much more research driven.

I found Outliers to be interesting but too anecdotal for my taste.

I saw this too and found it interesting, especially since my son does not have an IQ score and the educational psychologist who tested him several years ago only gave us an estimate of what he might score on an IQ test based on his score on the WIAT. "A mature scientist with an adult IQ of 130 is as likely to win a Nobel Prize as is one whose IQ is 180."

I think the neurosurgeon who wrote Gifted Hands did not have an extremely high IQ but it was certainly high enough. I think his work ethic, social skills, and outside the box thinking, and natural ability enabled him to outperform some people who might have had higher IQ scores.

I agree, Lori. I kind of think the book belabored the point, though.

I listened to the entire book on CD.

I grew up on a Tobacco farm and picked fruit as a teenager.

I agree with his thesis about the work ethic and independent streak that arises out of intensive agriculture. Dr Victor Hanson has argued the same thing in his book "Fields without Dreams" as has Wendell Berry in "The Unsettling of America."

My wife's maternal Grandfather is a retired professional cowboy. His answer for any setback is, "You just gotta get tougher." or "From can to can't" which sums it all up.

Most people who do not live on a production farm have absolutely no idea what it takes to be successful at it. The amount of sheer work with all the unavoidable issues such as equipment breakdown, dangerous situations, weather, crazy neighbors, uncontrollable costs and crop prices, have no peer in other types of ventures other than a technology startup.

When kids grow up in this cultural outlook, they accept the long hours required to be successful at something with no complaining and parents expect hard work from their kids. Its nothing to get up at 5am and go until 10 pm and then do it all again the next day.

One of my brothers took over the farm. He gets up at 5am, does his pushups and situps and goes for a run, then does his chores. Once, he broke his ankle very badly, got it set in a cast, then he went back to work, hoe-ing the tobacco.

I know some home schooled kids who work on hay farms in the summer and work at night picking up hay from sunset to dawn for 25 cents a bale, sleep, then study in the afternoon. Some will earn $20,000 in a summer. These kids go right to Law School from the farm.

When I was in college, there were some very bright kids from Eastern Europe who were brilliant. But, I buried them with my work ethic. I studied 12 hours a day six days a week and did every single problem in the book - staying up every night past midnight. Then I went back and redid every problem before the final. I owned the finals.

My DW kept track of her hours when she was in college. If she put in 10 hours of studying a week per class, then she got an A.

I work with Chinese immigrants. They put a lot of pressure on their kids. They go to school during the day, then study 4 hours every night, then go to school on the weekends, too. That works out to about 80 hours of school/studying per week. They just bury the smarter kids by being totally prepared.

Bottom line - sure, you are smart, and can figure it out, but by being prepared, you KNOW it when you see it, saving you time when the test or issue arises.

The Germans have a word for it - Fingerspitzengefuhl - but this applies in all areas of knowledge - you are so totally prepared that you can instantly assess something new. I think the Zen term is Satori.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerspitzengef%C3%BChl

Ah farming...the only business where you buy retail and sell wholesale...(I grew up on one, too.) Or as an old custom-combining partner of my dad's used to say, "98% of farming is fixing things..." (imagine it in an Oklahoma twang...)

I always enjoy your posts, Austin! In re: Fingerspitzengefuehl, do you know the book "Old Books, Rare Friends" by Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern? They were two of the grandes dames of the antiquarian book business after the war (Rostenberg specialised in the printers of Strasbourg and Stern was an Alcott scholar)--they go on about Fingerspitzengefuehl at some length, in a book of great charm.

peace
minnie

I haven't gotten very far in the book, but the idea of 10,000 hours to mastery sparked my idea of parenting. DS12 did the math, and we figured if I was doing 'on the job' parenting training 20 hours a day when he was first born, then I hit my first 10,000 hours when he was a year and a quater old. (aproximatly)

We gave DH credit for 20 hours a week, and calculated that DH hit his matery level when DS was 10 year old.

...just when I was starting to suspect that female socalization was better suited to the parenting role, along comes a much better explaination.

I can't wait to share this with my cousin who just finished her first year as an adoptive mom of toddler boys.

Now I'm curious to see if you think that parenting is similar enough to violin playing to make the comparison valid, and how many hours y'all rate yourselves having spent parenting, and how many you assign your significant others.

Wry Smiles,
Grinity

My DH stayed home for the first month full-time and for 2 weeks half-time when each of our two boys were born. I nursed and cuddled the baby and took the night shift, and he changed diapers and cuddled and let me sleep during the day. Then when #2 was born, we tag-teamed to make sure that DS#1 still got mommy time and I still got some sleep.

I sing the praises of the Family and Medical Leave Act to anyone who will listen!

Not to mention singing the praises of his company. He came back to a promotion after child #2 was born, so he didn't get penalized at all. (Granted, he was still accessible if they needed him, and he had gotten all his projects set before he took off.) It was telling that many of the upper-level managers commented to him that they wished they had had that option when their kids were small and that they were 100% behind his choice to take time off. So nice!

Anyway, the upshot is that DH got his parental certification a lot earlier than most non-SAH dads. We were both quite confident in his ability to parent without my hovering over him, and that carried over even after he had gone back to work. He was and still is a very hands-on dad. In fact, he's getting the kids to bed right now while I play!

I love my husband! Not to brag, but I married really, really well!

Grinity, I think it's easier to master the violin than it is to master the art of parenting. :0 There are basically a fixed number of notes to be played on that violin, but just when you think you have that child figured out, he changes!

Austin, that was a well written post on the benefits of growing up in an agrarian culture. As most of the longer term posters know, we raise beef cattle and I work as a programmer/analyst in town. People are so far removed from agriculture about the only thing they know of it is stories relayed from several generations removed, or maybe from watching 'Green Acres'. They are shocked to find one piece of equipment can rival what they paid for their house. They are surprised we don't have a flock of chickens, a handful of milk cows, or that we visit the symphony more than the average office worker.

Yeah, my mom really resented me, amusingly enough. She felt like I didn't suffer enough because my husband was so supportive.

I just responded with an evil grin that "Well, I married better."

Obviously that didn't go over well! LOL!

Lina, if you've never had to do hard physical labor, you don't know the incentive there is to achieve academically. There is a reward in physical labor, but there is more prestige and usually more money in mental labor. Please keep an open mind to opposing opinions.

I think she was saying that it seemed racist. At least that's how it sounded to me. Frankly, I'd stay away from that, too!

(Or maybe too reductionist. But mostly I heard racism.)

Interesting, I never took it that way. I would have thought it racist to say all Asian kids achieve higher just because they're Asian. I looked at is as a cultural thing, where intellectual achievement is valued more than working in a rice paddy; therefore the parents push their children to achieve academically.

Well, I didn't read the book, and it didn't sound like she had either. (I could be wrong.) I just took from what she said about it that this was her impression.

I suspect it's one of those things that when taken out of context just sounds wrong.

And please remember that I may be way off here! It's always dangerous to try to speak for someone else, even in good faith! So please take me with a grain of salt!

I didn't read it yet, either. There's a line at the library for it! I didn't want to sound to hard on Lina, but I didn't want her to dismiss what has gotten good reviews based on one item that she heard and didn't like. I also have to remember she's only 12!

LOL! True enough.

Him assuming "Asians" are good at math was already stereotypical, but I thought that back then a large number of members of quite a few cultures did hard farm work. How come he singles out Asians?

I can't speak for other "Asians", but as far as I know my grandparents or parents have never farmed a rice paddy, and were entirely self-motivated.

This just stood out to me because a lot of people were picking on it, and I thought it was just ridiculous, but I don't know if the rest of the book was good or bad. My first impression of the book wasn't too great, though.

Well Said, Lina (for a person of Any Age)

This isn't from Outliers, in fact I can't remember where it's from, but I read once that someone is forwarding the idea that males are better at Math than females because in pre-history Males were under genetic pressure to be smart enough to figure out which babies are their's and bring food to the right ones. Counting and keeping track of cycles and lengths of pregnancy were supposed to be a big help for the Males in passing on their genes and not so important for Females.

Well, it did make me giggle to think of it! Seems to me that the best way to be sure your offspring prospered under those conditions was to make sure that the whole small community prospered.

((shrugs))
Someone invent a time machine quickly so I can satisfy my curiosity!

Thanks!
Grinity

Interesting how two different takes come out of the same statement, isn't it? It's all about perspective, I think.

As someone whose father grew up on a farm but who was not herself raised there, I rather see both sides here. I do think there's a particular work ethic borne of necessity that is associated with farm life. But I completely agree that singling out Asians as having more of it than anyone else and assuming that an entire culture springs from that way of life--as if there are no other avenues for life in "those" places--is narrow-minded and offensive.

Okay, now I guess I really have to read the book to see how the argument is actually posed. So much can get lost in translation, you know?

BTW, Lina, as a former teacher of argumentative writing, I can tell you that reading things that are offensive is not always a bad idea. It's good to know what your opposition is saying so you can knock them back step by step. You have a real flair for writing and a very logical mind from what I've seen here, so I hope you'll read things that infuriate you sometimes. The challenge to your beliefs will either strengthen you or will lead you to question--and thereby create better beliefs.

I'm not sure you need that time machine. That seems pretty silly to me! Wouldn't it be more likely that you'd count so that you knew how many rocks to pass before you stopped at the good watering hole? Or how many pieces of fruit to cut up so everyone got one?

Some theories are just plain goofy!

Of course I don't need it, but I'd like one anyway. ((wink))

Re: Family and Medical Leave Act

Just curious as to how this works, Kriston? Is it leave for which either parent is eligible? Does the govt. pay your salary? How long is it? Is it just for a baby being born, or other medical conditions, too?

In Canada, parental leave is 52 weeks, and can be divided between parents (adoptive parents are eligible, too). The first 16 (I think) weeks are maternity leave, and the other 36 are parental; the government pays the standard employment insurance rate (55 or 60% of earnings, I think), and one's employer can choose to top it up. Frenchie's employer did top his up, to 93%, so he had 36 weeks off with each of our three kids, at 93% of full pay (I took the 16 weeks the first time, when I still had a job, but wasn't eligible for it the next two times). It was lovely having one's husband home, as you say--especially since I had caesareans every time, and was pretty creaky for about six or eight weeks--and it was very nice to be able to share the parenting for which we had waited (in great frustration) for more than a decade!

Just wondering if your system is similar--it's funny, we live so close, but I don't know much about how this kind of stuff works there (all the threads y'all write about the SAT are basically Greek to me, too!).

Thanks for satisfying my curiosity!

minnie

ps An old friend of mine is Hungarian; he told me that his wife had two years at full pay after each of their children were born--what a lovely thing!

No pay. That's definitely where the U.S. is not so good as other places. (Our taxes are lower though, so there's that...)

We saved up so we could afford to have DH take the time off. He first took his paid vacation time, then went to unpaid leave.

12 weeks is the limit of unpaid leave protected by the FMLA. It can be used for any medical or family issue that would require time off. It doesn't have to be used all at once, but can be split up over the course of the year to cover something like debilitating chemotherapy treatments, for example. Anyone working for a company larger than 50 people, I believe, is covered under the law. Companies smaller than that are not required to comply with the law in any way.

The big thing is that the company cannot fire you. Your job is protected. Before the FMLA, that was not guaranteed.

I know very few husbands in the U.S. who take more than a couple of days off for a new baby. It's usually just not feasible financially for most families to have both adults in the family not working for any amount of time.

No paid leave at all is granted by the government or by anyone else that I've ever heard of. It simply isn't done here.

I negotiated for 12 weeks off from my job with no pay after my vacation time was gone. 6-8 weeks is the more common amount, I think. Then I went to working half-time from home for a year before I gave it up to stay home full-time.

So, yes, very different from Canada! (Sadly!)

Interesting--thank you for taking the time to explain it to me!

I like the flexibility of yours--it's interesting that it applies to various types of leave. I believe that the government here at one point was talking about adding a family-related leave programme (for taking care of dying parents or spouses, for instance)that would work more or less the same as the parental leave, but for a shorter amount of time (13 weeks? can't remember). Not sure that got off the ground yet, though (and thankfully, I haven't needed to investigate that type of issue).

Of course, as you say, our taxes are much higher here--somebody's got to pay for this kind of stuff!

peace
minnie

Happy to help foster the cause of international understanding! I appreciated hearing about how it was for you, too. We tend to get exclusively politically biased takes on parental leave, so it's especially nice to hear how it really works, straight from the trenches!

Thanks!

Okay I read a little more of the book--the part where Terman looked at the records of 730 of the men with very high IQs and divided them into three groups. The top 20% was the A group and the most successful. The middle 60% were the B group and they were doing satisfactorily. The bottom 150 were the Cs, the ones who Terman judged to have done the least with their superior mental ability.

My husband and I both have family members who might have fit in this C group. We are doing what we can to make sure our son does not end up like this, including reading books like Outliers and Gifted Hands.

My husband has worked since he was 13 to support himself after the death of a parent, including work on a farm and any other kind of work he could find so he could have enough to eat, and he joined the military as soon as he was able where his intelligence and hard work allowed him to move up in rank faster than most people. I think not having money actually helped him in some ways because he did develop that work ethic and he also had to figure out how to fix things and make them last as long as possible. He always seemed to be able to fix anything. Also, even though it looked like he had less free time than other people, he always found time to read and learn because he needs less sleep and has more energy than most people. I always wondered if that was part of the reason he was smarter than me. He slept less, therefore he had more hours to learn things than I did. My dad also had to work at a very young age to help support his family after his dad died. They both share their stories of surviving hard times with my son. I think my son is listening, but his life is so different, so much easier, with the internet available to answer all of his questions and so many games to spend his free time on when his dad and his grandfather had very little free time as kids.

OT?

Working dads can do it, they just need to have the right schedule.

My DW stayed home for 6 weeks, but I did the 10 pm to 5 am shift with Mr W, slept for 3 hours, went to work from 10 am to 6 pm, came home for three hours so DW could sleep, then hit the gym, then came back home. DW got her 8 hours of sleep and I got to spend a lot of time with Mr W. I could get in some extra work when Mr W slept if I wanted. He'd sleep on a pillow on the couch while I worked or read.

Added to the list. Fingerspitzengefuehl is a wonderful concept.

Its called TEAMWORK!!!!

Its not an Asian thing, but a cultural thing in the sense of where someone comes from, what their parents did, and their parents - what is passed down and stressed from generation to generation.

All things being equal, I will hire a farm kid, musician, or ex-military over all other candidates because their background presupposes discipline, hard work, and emotional maturity - they have had to subordinate their whims to structured tasks on a daily basis - when sick, when sad, when hurt, when glad.

Gladwell looks at many ethnic groups - not just Rice Paddy farming - for examples - and it not ethnicity - but the culture that occupation brings.

My husband's schedule didn't allow him to help much. He was working full time and finishing up his degree (also full time)so he could get a higher paying job. Our son had colic and cried a lot, and wouldn't take a bottle so I hated to leave him with anyone, including his dad. I had saved up enough sick leave so that I could stay home for six weeks full time, but my son's colic lasted 3 1/2 months and this was one of the reasons I quit working. I didn't think anyone who didn't absolutely, unconditionally love my very loud colicky baby could tolerate his crying spells for any length of time.

I don't think he ever changed even one diaper.

I didn't read the book, but there seems to be a "rags to riches" theme from the comments on this thread. It makes sense that having no other choice but to work your tail off to get food on the table for your family would lead to a strong work ethic that generalizes to academics. I often wonder if my kids are, at some level, at a disadvantage, because they don't have that expectation placed on them. There's no doubt that their work ethic isn't what it would be if we had no choice but to work year-round every day. Then again, they seem happy - and I'm willing to sacrifice a little work-ethic for that.

quote from Austin:
All things being equal, I will hire a farm kid, musician, or ex-military over all other candidates because their background presupposes discipline, hard work, and emotional maturity - they have had to subordinate their whims to structured tasks on a daily basis - when sick, when sad, when hurt, when glad.

[/quote]

Hooray! I once was told that the specific reason that I did NOT get a job was because I was a musician; they liked me, but they were sure that all musicians must be flakes. I just thought to myself, jeepers, you people know nothing--do you think we're born being able to play advanced repertoire, and therefore have lots of extra time to sit around drinking absinthe or whatever??

LOL.

I once trained a first-chair violinist to write code. I took a chance.

This person was self-sufficient and writing high quality software in six months. They worked 50-60 hours a week without complaint, came up with creative ideas, could read manuals for information, and listened to criticism. I have since trained four other top rate musicians ( one was Indian and one was Chinese ) who had zero knowledge of software with the same results.

First or second chair university-level musicians are an untapped gold mine.

When I talk to most other people about this, they just look at me like I am an idiot. They want to hire clones with Compusci degrees and certifications rather than go find raw talent+work ethic and then train it, then they complain about people not working hard enough or who are not creative enough. Go figure.

But, look at this way - if you could hire someone who was in the top .1% in their profession, are in their early 20s, and then retrain them, would you? Do you think they will be average or be a top performer after a while?

This is why I agree with Gladwell - I see SMART people being bested by harder workers every day where I work.

In the book he also asserts that the reason asians are good at math has everything to do with the way their language simplifies number naming, thus making the numbers much simpler to remember and hold in your mind while doing calculations. The focus almost implies that it is THE reason, forget about people having math inclination and aptitude. A little offensive IMO.

OT Happy New Year!!

I should start by admitting that I haven't read the whole book - just a few chapters while browsing in the bookshop for Christmas gifts (obviously that was one I didn't buy). It was certainly readable and interesting but, as I think others have also said, he seemed to me a bestseller writer than serious thinker. So many anecdotes, so many sweeping generalisations, unexplored assumptions and arguments full of holes (in the parts of the book that I read, anyway ). On the other hand, perhaps we smug first worlders really are about to be knocked off our perches by a tide of offspring of subsistence farmers from China. I suppose the African ones don't work quite hard enough, or was it covered in a chapter I didnt' get to? Which might also have dwelt a little on what success means, and to who? Did health and happiness get a mention anywhere? Or contribution to the greater good etc? Well, perhaps they did, and I'll try to keep an open mind pending the time I get around to reading the rest.

BTW Austin - I'm not from any of the backgrounds you mention, but seem to have managed a pretty good work ethic nonetheless. Would you go to the extreme of leaving me off a shortlist in favour of others based on assumptions re our backgrounds (all other things being equal)?

I'm thrilled to read this Austin, but wonder if most humans can copy you. Maybe my work ethic isn't as developed as it should be, but, that seems like a pretty tough schedule. How much sleep did you usually get? Was this about that same as before you became a parent? How long did you keep to this schedule? Was finding a job with a 'real' 8 hour day a problem?

Anyway, you obviously had the ability to look at parenting and find it an interesting challenge, which is to your credit. I think that's somewhat rare amoung males and females. Well Done!

Grinity

A thought on that--If what you're saying is true, then basically now he's telling us that Asian-Americans who never learned their native language will not be as "smart" as their Asia-residing counterparts?

Austin: I was never talking about work ethic (I agree with you about that), but how Gladwell seems to say Asians are smart because they're hard working, but doesn't really provide an explanation for why other countries farm, too, and aren't as good as math.

Hi Everyone!

I'm very late to the party here, and freely admit to the fact that I have only skimmed through the book (xmas present) and this discussion. But I had such a strong negative reaction to the book that I put it in the "To be returned' pile after perhaps 15 minutes of browsing.

My quick take on the book was that it was more important to be in the right place at the right time for success, rather than natural ability, talent, or IQ. In particular, he sites birthdates for hockey players as the greatest prediction of success. Hockey player born in the beginning of January, according to the author, hold a greater chance of being successful in hockey, than a hockey player born later in the year. Here is a quote:

This would be equivalent to advocating academic redshirting, in my book. He thinks that all kids are equal, and that a few months advantage in age will make all of the difference. Similarly, all kids are born with the same talent for hockey. Sheer size, in his opinion, makes all of the difference. I took him to task on this and looked up the Hockey Hall of Fame web site. Starting with 2008 and working backwards, I recorded the birthdates of the players who were inducted into the Hall of Fame. I went back 40 years (and at least 80 players), and other than Wayne Gretzky and one other person, there were no other January birthdays. Plenty of Octobers, Septembers, Junes, etc. I think his argument just doesn't hold. Maybe it holds for an average team with average player, say in high school, where size and practice have a small effect. But it completely excludes the idea that someone could be born with a natural talent that pushes them above the curve.

Bleck! I freely admit to forming an opinion based solely on the beginning of the book. By page 28, I was so frustrated that I hurled the book across the room. I was also probably influenced by the fact that the good friend who gave it to me usually sends me these odd books, such as dream symbols and interpretation (my last birthday present). Though we are very close friends, our reading material tends to differ dramatically!! Chris, please do let me know if the book improves in the later pages. I will happily go back and revisit it if you, or anyone else, found it interesting.

Y'know, I haven't made it past the chapter where he talks about various airlines, so I can't say I loved the entire thing, but I did interpret it pretty differently. I really thought he was coming across as saying talent is important - even for those hockey players, but a big chunk of them just get cut out of the picture, at least in the way that players get picked in the last couple of decades.
My main take away was that circumstance is a bigger deal than we realize - and I think he was advocating against this. In other words, I think he's trying to say 'let's have some [i]*much[/i]* better way to get our best minds positioned for success!!'
Maybe by the end of the book he wraps up well and really makes this point vividly, but I haven't gotten there yet...
anyone else?

Thanks for the enthusiastic opinion!

It's interesting how different the take-aways for each person are. It seems like he's not doing a fabulously great job of making his points, since I think we're a pretty sharp group...

Oh Chris, let me know what you think right after you read the very last chapter.


Very astute. I was definately left with the impression he was begging the question.

I'm certainly not trying to bash Gladwell, as mentioned, I've enjoyed his other books. I just don't think this was his best work. Well, that's being a little too kind.....

Ok, I am picking it back up!
I wanted to list out the couple of chapters that I think are most relevant to this board, that I *did* read: The trouble with geniuses parts 1 and 2.
In part 1, he describes a quality of the successful talented person that he says is part of why a high-iq person might out-succeed a very high-iq person: creativity. I think most folks here have creativity on their radar, I know the gt program my ds is in has a strong emphasis on problem solving, divergent thinking skills, mapping out problems to see other ways to solve them. There are some learnable aspects to what Gladwell only describes but doesn't really even name...
In Part 2, he has a discussion of those more 'chance' aspects of success: family background being the very strongest. According to him, and it makes sense to me, it plays into whether someone feels capable and inclined to speak up for themselves to turn a bit of bad luck into just a bump in the road instead of a career ending mis-step. There is some aspect of creativity in this ability too, which he refers to as 'practical intelligence'. The tale of Oppenheimer is used to illustrate this pretty dramatically. I think the chapters stand alone enough that one could skip straight to them...
no pressure!

I finally finished the darn thing!
Page 268 - I really think he does bring it on home.
(Spoiler alert)
"To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success - the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history - with a society that provides opportunities for all. If Canada had a second hockey league for those children born in the last half of the year, it would today have twice as many adult hockey stars. Now multiply that sudden flowering of talent by every field and profession. The world could be so much richer that the world we have settled for."

The last chapter is interesting, sometimes gross (the punishment part), but a pretty good wrap up on the concept of family background having so much to do with actual success. Just broadening it out to demonstrate how our parents got the way they are (their parents/their era) and so on...

I am ok with the book; certainly he does a bit of baiting here and there, and it ended up feeling a bit scatter-shot to me, but I think his intentions are good.
I am sufficiently 'scared' about a variety of new things now and feel well warned not to let myself or my kids rest on their IQ laurels...

Hm.

Culture has a lot to do with language. But not always. A culture can survive a language change intact.

His chapter on the Scots-Irish clan-feuding transplanted to the Kentucky Hills is one. My DW and I laughed all the way through that chapter since that is my heritage and its on display whenever we visit my dad's side of the family. There is no Gaelic spoken in the hills of that area, and Culloden was over 250 years ago, but there are a lot of Scottish flags flying in that area to this day!!

There is more to culture than language - but language can make some things easier.

Gladwell does dwell on the Chinese numbering nouns, indicating they are easier to grasp and say than the English equivalent, allowing Chinese speaking kids to move ahead more quickly. I have to agree. The English counting nouns like eleven and twelve are bizarre - in English we have squished three different numbering concepts together and three different bases and three languages withing from 0 to 20. And then there is our system of weights and measures!!!

And language can retard certain concepts because that language does not have a deep diffusion of key ideas.

For instance, China never discovered, codified, and popularized Logic like the Greeks did. And the political legacy of the strong central state control over education and ideas meant that theoretical knowledge was never developed to the great degree in the West. In fact, theoretical knowledge was frowned upon.

The West was able to advance and surpass China and Japan due to advances in science brought on by theoretical studies which were encouraged by the Greek and Jewish cultures and later adopted by the Romans, Christians, early Muslims and then Western Europeans. The Greek cultural legacy permeates Western culture very, very deeply - and no one speaks Aeolian Greek today!

A cultural legacy he does not mention in his book, but which has been extensively studied, are the Sensei/Nisei - most of which founded and ran truck farms in California. The immigrant Japanese who formed the Sensei were carefully chosen by the Meiji to come to the US. IIRC, they and the Neisei did very well, but their offspring reverted to the mean as they moved away from their cultural roots.

Good test, but I have to ask:

Did you correct for the age cutoffs in the leagues the players played in when they were growing up? They change over time and differ from nation to nation. You have got to look at the details of each player.

Gladwell looks at other examples from other sports, too.

His argument is that it is small advantages that accumulate over time due to chance, work ethic, and culture that then add up to a significant advantage.


Yep.

Talent is where you find it. Each and every one of us is capable of so much more than we like to think.

Most GT kids are NEVER identified and given the opportunities they should have.

Question:

On the book on tape I listened to, he has an Epilogue wherein he talks about the forced miscegenation in his past. Is it in the book, too?

I find it Ironic that he is accused of some things, when Gladwell's outlook is clearly post-racial and he is of mixed race himself!!!

Kriston said it well.

But you can go on disability pay at the same rate that you get in Canada. My DW got 60%. She stayed away for 6 weeks, then went back. She did pay about $40 a month for the Disability Ins and the firm carried the rest.

One quirk of US law is that you cannot be paid for working if you are on disability. Stupid. They will prosecute you.

Some firms are flexible. I was told to take as much time as I needed. I just shifted my hours and got less sleep.

A lot of people just quit their job - its not fair to the team to be absent for so long - and then re-enter the work force when the kids start school.

Jobs in the US are more plentiful and very easy to get versus other nations. This makes this work.

Well, if you are speaking of me, I'll just point out I never "accused" Malcolm Gladwell of being racist.

I have to argue with your logic, however, being bi-racial certainly does not automatically immunize a person from racism.

I'll admit that I was disappointed in The Tipping Point, and didn't really see what all the fuss was about. This book sounds interesting though, at least for the amount of discussion that it is generating! I think I will request a copy from my library system.

Good one Kcab!

If you are referring to the Implicit Association Test he referenced, I think it's a very important tool to demonstrate that sometimes people have subtly racist leanings whether they realize it or not.

I'd guess that could also translate into words or action with questionable undertones of bias. I'm quite sure anyone could fall into that trap, we are after all, quite complex.

If anyone is interested in taking the test, here's a link:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

This is just a great discussion, I am enjoying the latest comments!
Just to respond to a few that I didn't get a chance to over the last couple of days...

From Austin:
"Gladwell looks at many ethnic groups - not just Rice Paddy farming - for examples - and it not ethnicity - but the culture that occupation brings."

True, but also Gladwell got very very specific about how very fussy rice farming is - the work ethic is one part of the equation but he was also talking about the very difficult task of getting the slope of the bed just right, maintaining the water level, spacing the plants, fertilizing, etc. It almost sounds like a bit of engineering, agriculture, chemistry, and biology rolled into one - maybe other areas of farming require these levels of precise manipulation, but he makes it sound pretty unusual. I have never been a farmer, so I wouldn't know for sure.

Jool -
There is a rags-to-riches theme in the book, to be sure, but there are also stories of folks like Robert Oppenheimer and Bill Gates - mid to upper class kids and the opportunities they've found/had the presence of mind to seize.

Just in general, to dispel maybe a bit of the idea that he's just assuming asians are better at math:
He goes to some length to discuss the testing which has repeatedly shown the student populations of various asian countries as well-ahead of western countries in areas of science and math - it is not simply a stereotype or assumption that they are better, it appears to be a testable trend. He talks about some hypotheses to explain this trend, but also asserts that it makes no sense that given the right circumstances western students could do just as well!

'Neato and kcab - yes! actually even in this book, in the epilogue which Austin mentioned, he has a discussion about race and racism whether folks are in the minority or the majority it doesn't guarantee a non-racist outlook. He discusses his own mother's racism.
(I read that as just the last chapter of the book, but now I see it is noted as an epilogue.)

got to run...

Well, looks like someone spoke too soon! <.< Thanks for the clarification, Chris.

Off-topic: I took the IA test that Neato linked to, and apparently I slightly favor white people over blacks, but I'm neutral with Barack and McCain. For the first block I didn't read the directions and said McCain was "good" while I was actually supposed to select Barack, so that may have skewed the results. :\

I'll admit I usually leap ahead of arguments.

My sister's kids are clearly bi-racial and they are quite sensitive to it.

Yup, I would agree with that - he is definitely talking quantity of learning in a period, not kids in one group exceeding the level of other groups and then falling back below that level. Is that what you mean? The gains are within the same group, but the idea of having more material from which to pull over the summer for an upper class kids makes sense to me....

(don't hate me for suggesting the book!!) whether you agree with the author or not, it's a good one to have under your belt, right??

Chris, I'm glad you recommended the book. I'd been meaning to read it and your post gave me the kick in the pants I needed.

Thanks for "bumping" Kipp. I had never heard of that school and was quite intriqued by the description of it.......

Whether or not I was a fan of this book; I LOVE these kinds of discussions.

Chris, I'm glad that you recommended it too. I have enjoyed this discussion immensely, and I like seeing different sides of the same issue. It think it is my scientific background that keeps me from accepting the strong influence of chance and luck. I still believe that people make their own luck by watching the flow of events around them, reading the subtle changes in their surroundings, and being willing to act to create new experiences. I think that some people will watch the world around them closely enough to position themselves in a place where they can take advantage of an opportunity as it presents itself. Humans just ascribe this process to luck.

Perhaps I am biased in the fact that I believe people with a high IQ are "better" at this than someone on the opposing side of the bell curve. (oh boy, that will probably cause a firestorm!) But I think you need to be inquisitive and constantly seeking new experiences in order to create "luck". And I see a correlation between that inquisitive nature, one that is unwilling to accept the standard answer and constantly asks 'why', as one of the hallmarks of high IQ. However, I do see that if a person with a high IQ is never challenged, is never pushing the boundaries to learn more, and falls in the trap of underachievement, then they will probably stop asking those questions that lead them to see the subtle shifts in the world around them. And that is the biggest gripe that I have with the way our school teach our kids. Rote memorization and test score are seen as more important than inquisitive critical thinking.

I think that all kids should be taught to analyze their world critically. All kids should be taught to question 'why' and to seek out clues to how the world around them works. Do high IQ kids do this more naturally than normal kids? Or do the parents of high IQ kids reward and encourage this behavior from the start? This question might lead to a chicken verses the egg argument.

But I am speaking without reading the book. So I will thank you Chris for making me curious enough to move Outliers out of the 'to be returned' pile and put it next to my comfy chair on the top of the stack. I may write back in a few days to say that my above argument was completely off base. But then, that is what I love about reading a good book. It can have to power to alter, shape, or at least cause us to question our beliefs.

added to the end of the post....
I think, after I went back and reread your post, Chris, that we are really saying the same thing. We are just using different words and coming at it from a different angle.
We are both saying that creativity/inquisitive thinking is the best indication of success.

What's the old saying: luck is really when preparation meets opportunity? That makes perfect sense to me, though I'd add "talent" to the mix, too...

I'm with you, ebeth. I'm not a big believer in luck either. No, we don't have control over the whole world, but I think we have control of quite a lot, and we have the ability to see patterns and circumstances developing and respond accordingly even more so. Do circumstances affect us? Of course. But I think we have even more effect on our circumstances if we choose to. And I agree that smarter people (and there are many kinds of smart!) tend to choose to affect their circumstances more regularly.

I worked my way through college waiting tables. The restaurants I worked at were not places full of GT people, not in any sense. Life was very narrow for the people there. I found it deeply depressing how little control they took over their lives. Things "just happened" to them. They said things like "Who coulda seen that coming" a lot. And I pretty much always thought, "Well, *I* could have! Cause and effect, guys!" They saw luck, I saw pattern. They threw up their hands and felt helpless, I saw them making bad choices.

Are there smart people with blind spots? Oh yes! Some bigger than others. But I never saw such abdication of personal control by such a large group of people as I saw at those restaurants. It was depressing...and eye-opening.

Circumstance matters. But I think there's a lot more to GTness than when your birthday is, and I think there's more to success than how much time you put in on an endeavor.

Then again...I value hard work, but some people are just born better at things than others. I was a better writer in college than my classmates, and I'll guarantee you that I spent less time doing it than they did. I never kept a journal, I wrote my papers at the last minute and didn't revise them, etc. I know I didn't spend 10,000 hours writing before I wrote my novel. Nowhere close!

OTOH, I guarantee you that I could spend 100,000 hours--a million hours!--perfecting my jump shot, and I still wouldn't make it in the WNBA. I don't have the talent and I never will. Work matters. Choices matter. But talent matters, too. There's no vacuum here. I'd put birthdays pretty low on the list of things that matter...

My reading list grows every time I read this thread. Love it!

This reminded me of a concept I came across today called "Zone of Proximal Development" by Vygotsky. It was described in a book called Alternative Assessments with Gifted and Talented Students by Joyce L Tassel-Baska.
It helped me better define some of my frustration. DD6 spends so little of the school day working in the zone of proximal learning. She also spends very little time even working at the level of what she can do independently. Instead so much of her time is spent working below both the zone of proximal development and her level of independent work. Most of her new learning seems to come from what I can squeeze in afterschooling.

At least the MAP testing is more open ended than the state standards testing. It gives me a starting point to understand what DD6 can do independently...when the Powers That Be don't substitute the correct scores with erroneous data showing there's very little difference between the students

finally, i've gotten to the end of the book, and he does compare farming in many different countries to wet-rice farming, building the argument that this particular kind of farming is more 'human input driven' than other kinds of farming, which are more dependent on natural factors.

I think his main point is that people will work harder if they see that the harder one works the more one is rewarded. This is a key reason that some parents here choose gradeskips or other ways to get their child into a situation where 'more work equals more reward' instead of leaving them in classrooms where 'no work = As' and 'hard work = As'

Smiles,
Grinity

Still waiting to move up in the library queu to read Outliers, but I've enjoyed this discussion. I came across this article written by the author Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker:
Most Likely to Succeed: How do we hire when we can�t tell who�s right for the job?
It likens the search for good teachers to the search for good quarterbacks. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell

Nice snag Inky -

2 counterarguments:
A)I have heard (mabye from Wenda Sheard?) that the is plenty of research that says what will make a good teacher, and it comes down to -
Strong Vocabulary and
Strong knowldege of the material.
(appologies in advance, I'm feeling a bit vauge here, can anyone clean this up for me?)

But basically, the idea is that yes we do know what makes a good teacher!

B) I've heard from friends who started in teaching that the social interactions between experienced and new teachers are very poor. One friend described the teacher's lounge as being like the cafeteria in Middle School, complete with gossip, exclusion, and cliques. I think that something like 50% of new teachers leave after the first (or maybe it was second) year!

Grinity

I thought this was interesting in light of the Malcolm Gladwell article on teachers. I'd read similar things to what you posted Grinity: 1) there's a link between good teachers, strong verbal skills and deep subject knowledge 2) 50% leave within 5 years. It'll be interesting to see how this works out for D.C. and implications for other school districts. Our district web site had an article today about teachers who achieved national board certification.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...4/AR2009010401534.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Austin, thank you for the inspiring story and the clear and well-articulated message. Even though I did not grow up on a farm, I completely agree with your points. Many people, whether or not they are tested as gifted, are "smart enough" for the tasks that they face, it's a matter of how hard they work. In my family, especially for my DS8 (who can get smug once in a while), use of words such as "talented", "gifted", "smart" are discouraged. We have tasks to do, we either do them well and be proud, or we don't do them well and need to try harder next time.

Well...

We use terms like "GT" and "smart," since not using them always seems to me like it makes those words taboo, bad to be, forbidden. I don't like that any better.

We have talked a lot with the kids about the fact that how smart you are is like what color your eyes are or how long your legs are: it's just the equipment you came into the world with. It's nothing to brag about. It's not really all that worthy of note, frankly. It certainly doesn't make you a better (or worse) person. It's just a boring old fact. The kids don't brag about how smart they are since to do so would be nonsensical to them.

(Though I will note that kids in that 5-8yo age range do tend to rank themselves according to those around them, as in "I am the smartest person in my class, Jenny is second, and Joey is third." That's developmentally appropriate for that age, and they do it with EVERYTHING: how tall they are, how old they are, who has the most Pokemon cards, etc. That isn't necessarily the same as bragging. We still discourage it when they do it with intelligence, but it IS normal and it is NOT bragging in the normal sense of the word.)

We don't compliment people for being smart because "smart" or "GT" doesn't mean anything unless you do something with it, and *that* requires work. Effort is what we compliment. Kindness is encouraged. Complimenting someone for being smart doesn't even make any sense in our house. My mom's old saw (worth sharing again!) is "It's nice to be smart, but it's smart to be nice." I think that's so true, and I use it with my kids.

But I don't like the idea that intelligence should not be named. It's a fact. Not calling it what it is doesn't do anything but make a kid feel like something is wrong with him, since whether you call it GT or not, he knows he's different.

I just requested it because I read the posts. And I wonder about where the person scores on risk taking.

Because a risk taker will find himself in unusual circumstances and if you are smart, you can figure things out and find opportunity. It seems that outliers were risk takers.

Ren

Yes, I would say that risk taking is touched on - I don't recall it being teased out from the overall idea of situational or practical intelligence in particular.
However lots of the stories of individuals definitely have interesting parts about making a leap of faith. Hope you find it a good read.

I am reading Point Counterpoint and in it there is a discussion about a poor, bright fellow that chanced upon a scholarship because of unusual circumstances. And the discussion is whether chance, or do bright fellows create those chances.

You can't create some rich sick kid moving to the country where you will have a chance to study because of him. How many outliers were just lucky and so many not?

Ren

It depends on the culture around that farming community and the level of competition for resources and inputs. Death by famine is surely a motivator!! So is social pressure to have good looking fields and farms.

Borlaug changed how grain is farmed. Its hard for people to conceive of a time when the ground was plowed and drilled without thinking. Not that it ever was, but the level of thought that is used today is very high.

Here is a pretty typical article on what is required to get good wheat yields.

If you relabelled the graphs, you might be thinking about finance or physics.

http://pubs.caes.uga.edu/caespubs/pubcd/B1135.htm

Dr Kee has also done some work on Ryegrass.

www7.tamu-commerce.edu/agscience/ppt/tfgc-2.ppt

However, dryland farming - where you plant and then wait/worry, is not anywhere as intensive as manual tobacco or rice farming.

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.

It depends on the "population". Ours is such that the student is placed in a class that is still disinterested and slow. They are still bored, but with older kids. Once they are in Middle School, there are often more choices. However, in my daughter's accelerated classes, there is enthusiasm and a much more thorough learning experience so they can jump ahead in seventh. However, I still want her to stay with this group, not with bored older students with attitude.

This is why I think parents of GT kids should just move into school districts where the districts get it. So much energy is wasted fighting alone for one kid, rather than working together to improve something that already exists. And the kids find kinship and a secure place to grow - and, importantly, so do the parents.

In Texas, if your son is good at football in the 7th/8th grade, then there are about a half-dozen places you live if you want him to progress with similar peers.

Yet, do we see the same thing in academics?