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

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.

After years of worrying about issues like school funding levels, class size, and curriculum design, many reformers have come to the conclusion that nothing matters more than finding people with the potential to be great teachers. But there�s a hitch: no one knows what a person with the potential to be a great teacher looks like. The school system has a quarterback problem.

Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree�and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before. That means that the profession needs to start the equivalent of Ed Deutschlander�s training camp. It needs an apprenticeship system that allows candidates to be rigorously evaluated. Kane and Staiger have calculated that, given the enormous differences between the top and the bottom of the profession, you�d probably have to try out four candidates to find one good teacher. That means tenure can�t be routinely awarded, the way it is now. Currently, the salary structure of the teaching profession is highly rigid, and that would also have to change in a world where we want to rate teachers on their actual performance. An apprentice should get apprentice wages. But if we find eighty-fifth-percentile teachers who can teach a year and a half�s material in one year, we�re going to have to pay them a lot�both because we want them to stay and because the only way to get people to try out for what will suddenly be a high-risk profession is to offer those who survive the winnowing a healthy reward.

At the heart of Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's vision for transforming D.C. schools is a dramatic overhaul of its 4,000-member teacher corps that would remove a "significant share" of instructors and launch an ambitious plan to foster professional growth for those who remain.

Rhee's plan calls for introduction of the program, but not before trying to turn over a significant portion of the instructor corps. She had hoped to winnow out poorly performing teachers by weakening tenure protections in exchange for higher salaries. That proposal remains the subject of stalled contract talks.

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

"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.