Chapter 6 Outliers By Matthew Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers, a novel depicting success, provides different examples of how an individual can achieve success in every chapter of his book to show his audience that success, despite a variety of barriers, is in fact in our control. A very important chapter titled, “Marita's Bargain”, explains the flaws in today’s public school systems. He shows the problems with the solutions to fix them while showing the alternatives to the regular system such as the KIPP Program in New York. The KIPP Program (Knowledge is Power Program) is a new kind of middle school that selects students from less fortunate locations and uses unique teaching strategies to turn them around into fantastic learners. In the chapter, Gladwell is extremely descriptive by using visual words to paint the picture of the South Bronx in New York City. He describes the buildings that were built in the 1960’s as squat and bleak looking. Gladwell had an interest in this subject as it involves success, however he had no prior experiences to produce the piece. Gladwell establishes personal credibility through the use of knowledge, reason, and facts and figures. He comes across very knowledgeable on the subject presenting great data with excellent vocabulary. He is able to do this with no obvious bias as well. Gladwell shows authority because he is well known for writing novels that involve success. His intention is to teach and explain how schools need to change the length of vacation breaks

Cultural legacy is important because it defines who we are. It is the inherence of social and ethnic morals. Without a legacy we live in a world without a heartbeat. In chapter eight of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell outlines the technique of rice cultivation and how rice farming created cultural legacies for the Chinese. In part two, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the outcome of culture legacy, and its tendency to contribute to one’s success.

By definition, success is a person or thing that achieves desired aims or attains prosperity. How an individual reaches the point of success is “not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky- but all critical to making them who they are” (285). Throughout the book, Outliers by Malcom Gladwell, the pieces of the secret to success are put together. Three parts of success include pure luck, the amount of time and effort put into working to achieve your goal and where you come from.

Success has been pondered over for centuries. How does one gain success? Is it worked for or is it only designated for a special few? Looking past the multitude of self help books that have been written, many like Malcolm Gladwell have begun to consider factors beyond just “working for it” as a contributor to success. One of these factors are cultural legacies. Though it is true that cultural legacies can be extremely powerful and that we should acknowledge them when considering someone’s success, it should be evident that the extent of power culture has is less than what Gladwell proposes. The place someone originated from has extremely influential effects on how that person thinks and acts, and in turn how they gain their success. The culture they grew up with becomes deeply rooted in their minds and results in different thought processes that shape the mindset they have while developing into an individual. However, Gladwell overestimates how powerful

Prompt: Write an essay that defends or challenges or qualifies Gladwell’s assertion that “if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and you use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires” (Gladwell 151).

In his book Outliers: the Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell discusses successful people, and what it is in their lives that make them successful. While many believe that it is one’s intelligence and personality that allows them to succeed, Gladwell argues that it is the environment they live in. The author provides numerous examples that support his argument, including the people of Roseto who rarely die of heart disease, sports players born at a certain time of the year that are highly accomplished, the importance of culture in airplane pilots, and many more. Out of all the various people doing extraordinary things described by Gladwell, a certain individual caused me to stop and think. Christopher Langan is known as the smartest man in America. With an IQ of 195, Langan is a clear example of what is referred to in Gladwell’s book as an outlier. His cognitive abilities are far higher than than that of the average person, who possesses an average IQ of 100. Langan should be a highly successful man, but he isn’t. Chapters 3 and 4 of Outliers explores why Langan, who is possibly the most intelligent person in the world, has accomplished nothing more than what an average person will accomplish in his or her lifetime. This inspired me to further examine people like Langan, and why they weren’t as successful as they were expected to be.

In Outliers, Gladwell describes the “10,000” hour rule, stating that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something. Jeanette Walls becomes successful largely through her writing. First, she worked on her high school’s newspaper for 5 years, first as editor and eventually as the main reporter and editor-in-chief. This provided her with the basis of her many hours of practice. When she moves to New York, she gets to do an internship at a small news outpost during her senior year of high school. After graduating, she lands a job there. She spends countless hours writing to add to her preexisting experience with her high school newspaper. By the time she reaches college, she has been writing for thousands of hours, gaining the priceless experience that Gladwell would say helped her towards her success.

Gladwell’s book Outliers is the most interesting book I have ever read. I say that because of the ideas that are presented and the way that he presents those ideas. He uses stories with characters to get the ball rolling of what he was to talk about. He then uses other books, professionals, and experiments to provide reasoning for his ideas. The chapter that I especially liked, and that I thought he did a good job of getting his point across in was chapter 6— “Harlan, Kentucky”. I believe in this chapter he did his best job of trying to get his point across which is, cultural background plays a bigger part in our way of living than we realize.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his novel entitled, “Outliers,” explores the landscape of success and shows us that success comes from the culture that surrounds the successful , not their intelligence and ambition. Gladwell explains this through a series of situations and studies. In Part One, he discusses success as a result of timing, such as the month or year you were born. In Part Two, he focuses on cultural legacies and how they play a role in helping someone become successful. He unfolds the reasons why hockey players are not born in the latter part of the year, why the Beatles and Bill Gates were able to become so successful, and why Jewish immigrants were able to become successful lawyers and doctors. Gladwell disproves many beliefs by discovering

The novel Outliers, aims to investigate the very thing we want for our family, our students, and ourselves. For most of our lives we have believed that with hard work, anyone can achieve success. That had to be the reason that poor immigrants like Andrew Carnegie and college dropouts like Bill Gates achieved unimaginable wealth. Most of us were taught that working harder than anyone else would lead to ultimate success.

In the prevalent view today, a great number of people believe that the building blocks of success are within the personality and quality of the person. Malcolm Gladwell asserts a totally different nature in his bestselling non-fiction book Outliers, he indicates that majority of success comes from external forces in which few people are granted particular opportunities and advantages that not everybody is broken by destiny (i.e. Date of birth, family background, money, etc.). Although he poses strong evidence to back up his arguments, Gladwell, somewhat neglected the value of hard-work, knowledge and determination in his book. Gladwell’s theory of success holds some legitimacy; even so his record is ultimately depressing about the possibility of success. The

Do you have a natural born talent or know anyone with a gift or talent? Some people believe that if you do not practice that talent you will not reach your ultimate success and you will not be as successful as you can be. In the story, Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell he reveals the true definition of success by researching various groups of people ranging from different ages, socioeconomic backgrounds, and family culture and their path to success and how they got there. Everyone’s story of success wasn’t the same, and that was his main objective in writing this book to show society that everyone has the chance to succeed or fail regardless of your situation in life. Although many people may believe that having talent is

“...Successes are far more likely to come from wealthier families.” This quote from Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell goes hand in hand with another controversial quote in the same book. “Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from.” Every human comes from some background, we all have parents and a birth-town, as well as an income we grew up living off of. Yet do these background have a significant influence on the course of our lives?

Malcolm Gladwell argues that hard work and practice has more value than “innate talent” (Gladwell 1) in an excerpt from Chapter 2 “The 10,000-Hour Rule” of his novel Outliers: The Story of Success. Although he acknowledges that talent can be a factor in success, Gladwell believes that a person’s choice to work hard is what ultimately determines their achievements. To support this claim, he alludes to famous musicians and cites psychologists and other scientists to establish credibility, with the attempt to convince the audience that hard work overrules talent. His passage has a very clear and academic tone, making it easy for the audience to understand and not get confused.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is the story of success. It is the story of what it really is that makes certain people successful. The book delves into the science of how exactly people climb their way up the latter of success in a way that is new to our society with an idea that is well supported and very logical.