Text Rationale for Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Transcription

1 Text Rationale for Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell Rationale: This is the third non-fiction book written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown and Company on November 18, In Outliers, Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. To support his thesis, he examines the causes of why the majority of Canadian ice hockey players are born in the first few months of the calendar year, how Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates achieved his extreme wealth, how The Beatles became one of the most successful musical acts in human history, how Joseph Flam built his own firm into one of the most successful law firms in the world, how cultural differences lay a large part in perceived intelligence and rational decision making, and how two people with exceptional intelligence, Christopher Langon and J. Robert Oppenheimer, end up with such vastly different fortunes. Throughout the publication, Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. The publication debuted at number one on the bestseller lists for The New York Times and The Globe, holding the position on the former for eleven consecutive weeks. Generally well received by critics, Outliers was considered more personal than Gladwell's other works, and some reviews commented on how much Outliers felt like an autobiography. Reviews praised the connection that Gladwell draws between his own background and the rest of the publication to conclude the book. Reviewers also appreciated the questions posed by Outliers, finding it important to determine how much individual potential is ignored by society. Summary: From The New York Times Book Review: Gladwell s latest book, Outliers, is a passionate argument for taking the second version of the story more seriously than we now do. It is not the brightest who succeed, Gladwell writes. Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them. He doesn t actually tell his own life story in the book. (But he lurks offstage, since he does describe the arc of his mother s Jamaican family.) Instead, he tells other success stories, often using the device of back-to-back narratives. He starts with a tale of individual greatness, about the Beatles or the titans of Silicon Valley or the enormously successful generation of New York Jews born in the early 20th century. Then he adds details that undercut that tale. So, Bill Gates introduced as a young computer programmer from Seattle whose brilliance and ambition outshine the brilliance and ambition of the thousands of other young programmers. But then Gladwell takes us back to Seattle, and we discover that Gates s high school happened to have a computer club when almost no other high schools did. He then lucked into the opportunity to use the computers at the University of Washington for hours on end. By the time he turned 20, he had spent well more than 10,000 hours as a programmer. Benefit to Students: David A. Shaywitz, reviewing the book in The Wall Street Journal praised Gladwell's writing style as "iconic, and asserted that "many new nonfiction authors seek to define themselves as the 'Malcolm Gladwell of' their chosen topic." He complimented its clarity

2 and easy grace, but also pointed to these as possible Achilles heel for Gladwell because of his oversimplification of complex sociological phenomena to "compact, pithy explanations. Furthermore, he praised the book for asking some important questions, such as "How much potential out there is being ignored? How much raw talent remains uncultivated and ultimately lost because we cling to outmoded ideas of what success looks like and what is required to achieve it?" In a discussion about the book in Slate Magazine, John Horton was particularly moved by Gladwell's family history. He felt that the links between race and achievement were given substantive analysis, but found the lessons mentioned in Outliers to be "oddly anticlimactic, even dispiriting. His contribution concluded by remarking, "Outliers represents a squandered opportunity for Gladwell himself an outlier, an enormously talented and influential writer and the descendant of an African slave to make a major contribution to our ongoing discourse about nature, nurture, and race. Business Week gave the book four out of five stars and appreciated its "Aha!" moments, but wondered if Gladwell purposely omits evidence that contradict his thesis. The review remarked that Outliers was repetitive in parts, but that Gladwell eventually pulls the stories together into an overarching narrative. Brief description of proposed classroom activities generated by text: This book will be the Six Week Text in our Unit following the American Dream. We will study success, what it means to be successful, how our interpretations of the term vary, and how we craft our worldview based on our own definition of success. Questions for students to consider during this Unit: How do we define success? And, how do we expect to achieve success? What arguments can be made against Gladwell s claims? List of the TEKS/STAAR/HPISD curricular objectives the proposed text supports (1) Reading/Vocabulary Development. Students understand new vocabulary and use it when reading and writing. Students are expected to: (A) determine the meaning of grade-level technical academic English words in multiple content areas (e.g., science, mathematics, social studies, the arts) derived from Latin, Greek, or other linguistic roots and affixes; (B) analyze textual context (within a sentence and in larger sections of text) to draw conclusions about the nuance in word meanings; (2) Reading/Comprehension of Literary Text/Theme and Genre. Students analyze, make inferences and draw conclusions about theme and genre in different cultural, historical, and contemporary contexts and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. Students are expected to: (A) analyze the way in which the theme or meaning of a selection represents a view or comment on the human condition;

3 (B) relate the characters and text structures of mythic, traditional, and classical literature to 20th and 21st century American novels, plays, or films; and (C) relate the main ideas found in a literary work to primary source documents from its historical and cultural setting. (6) Reading/Comprehension of Literary Text/Literary Nonfiction. Students understand, make inferences and draw conclusions about the varied structural patterns and features of literary nonfiction and provide evidence from text to support their understanding. Students are expected to analyze how rhetorical techniques (e.g., repetition, parallel structure, understatement, overstatement) in literary essays, true life adventures, and historically important speeches influence the reader, evoke emotions, and create meaning. (7) Reading/Comprehension of Literary Text/Sensory Language. Students understand, make inferences and draw conclusions about how an author's sensory language creates imagery in literary text and provide evidence from text to support their understanding. Students are expected to analyze the meaning of classical, mythological, and biblical allusions in words, phrases, passages, and literary works. (8) Reading/Comprehension of Informational Text/Culture and History. Students analyze, make inferences and draw conclusions about the author's purpose in cultural, historical, and contemporary contexts and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. Students are expected to analyze how the style, tone, and diction of a text advance the author's purpose and perspective or stance. (12) Reading/Media Literacy. Students use comprehension skills to analyze how words, images, graphics, and sounds work together in various forms to impact meaning. Students will continue to apply earlier standards with greater depth in increasingly more complex texts. Students are expected to: (A) evaluate how messages presented in media reflect social and cultural views in ways different from traditional texts; (B) evaluate the interactions of different techniques (e.g., layout, pictures, typeface in print media, images, text, sound in electronic journalism) used in multi-layered media; (C) evaluate the objectivity of coverage of the same event in various types of media; and (D) evaluate changes in formality and tone across various media for different audiences and purposes. (13) Writing/Writing Process. Students use elements of the writing process (planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing) to compose text. Students are expected to: (A) plan a first draft by selecting the correct genre for conveying the intended meaning to multiple audiences, determining appropriate topics through a range of strategies (e.g.,

4 discussion, background reading, personal interests, interviews), and developing a thesis or controlling idea; (B) structure ideas in a sustained and persuasive way (e.g., using outlines, note taking, graphic organizers, lists) and develop drafts in timed and open-ended situations that include transitions and rhetorical devices to convey meaning; (C) revise drafts to clarify meaning and achieve specific rhetorical purposes,consistency of tone, and logical organization by rearranging the words, sentences, and paragraphs to employ tropes (e.g., metaphors, similes, analogies, hyperbole, understatement, rhetorical questions, irony), schemes (e.g., parallelism, antithesis, inverted word order, repetition, reversed structures), and by adding transitional words and phrases; (D) edit drafts for grammar, mechanics, and spelling; and (E) revise final draft in response to feedback from peers and teacher and publish written work for appropriate audiences. (15) Writing/Expository and Procedural Texts. Students write expository and procedural or work-related texts to communicate ideas and information to specific audiences for specific purposes. Students are expected to: (A) write an analytical essay of sufficient length that includes: (i) effective introductory and concluding paragraphs and a variety of sentence structures; (ii) rhetorical devices, and transitions between paragraphs; (iii) a clear thesis statement or controlling idea; (iv) a clear organizational schema for conveying ideas; (v) relevant and substantial evidence and well-chosen details; and (vi) information on multiple relevant perspectives and a consideration of the validity, reliability, and relevance of primary and secondary sources; Clarification of any potentially controversial segments and why the text remains a suitable choice, despite being potentially controversial: What are the risks of teaching Malcolm Gladwell s Outliers? What's distressing about Outliers is not the controversial nature of language, but rather, it is the seductive simplicity of its own arguments. Malcolm Gladwell commits fallacious reasoning through several of his claims: post hoc ergo propter hoc, hasty generalization, to name a few. Sometimes, the reasoning (such as the reasoning posited in his 10,000 hour rule, is simply just that: too simple. There are far too many cherry picked anecdotes instead of a well-rounded look at success, what constitutes success.

5 Similar Works: The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Steven R. Covey