Failure In The Outliers, Gladwell's 'The Outliers'

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

Success is a concept that is constantly altered and has a different meaning from person to person. The stereotypical definition of success would be someone who has a high-paying job or is in the upper-class. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers: The Story of Success, approaches the concept of success in a different and unique way. Gladwell discusses how opportunities, cultural legacy, and hard work all coincide with each other to produce real success. He uses mostly logic and multiple unrelated anecdotes to support and provide evidence for his statements. Gladwell's main argument is that although hard work and talent are essential for success, one’s given opportunities and cultural legacy is what really

All children are not raised the same exact way. There are many different parenting styles, ranging from authoritative to neglectful parenting. Along with those many different styles also come many different opinions on which ones are better or worse for children. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is a book that essentially looks into many factors that contribute to people's successes. In chapter four, Gladwell writes about how different parenting philosophies impact how successful the children will be when they are older. Gladwell claims that there are essentially only two main parenting philosophies, “concerted cultivation” and “accomplishment of natural growth” (Gladwell 104). Gladwell goes on to also claim that between those two parenting philosophies, children raised from concerted

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.

Social inequality stems from many facets of life and mindsets reproduced continuously in America. The main backbone of systematic inequality is formed off of race, gender and class, which all contain crucial aspects that further oppress those subjected to inequality in various aspects of life. The resources-schools, occupations, invested parents- around one fuels the opportunity in their lives, a concept highlighted by Malcom Gladwell, in his book, Outliers. Situations one are brought up in or uncontrollable genetic aspects can very easily restrain their opportunities. Racial discrimination, gender roles and inferiority and the lack of fluidity in the low and working class push inequality, which simultaneously influencing the rich and privileged.

Chapter 6 of Matthew Gladwell’s book Outliers, there are illustrations of many family feuds. While the feuds were horrific, they were indicative of pattern which existed within the Appalachian Mountains and surrounding areas. The region was seemingly plagued by a “culture of honor” (p. 167). Because of the ancestral heritage of the “Scotch Irish”, these mountaineers were willing to fight at the slightest challenge to their reputation (p. 167). This behavior results from the need to survive, and is strengthened by the clannish ways of the people. This inevitable violent way of life is correlated to the number of murders in the South, and the implication is these murders are personal, in the same way family feuds were in previous years. Moreover

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, he portrays many stories of success. He writes about many situations that produced being successful. Jeannette Walls wrote a memoir, The Glass Castle, about her crazy upbring. In doing so, she wrote about her success story. Her story proves some of Gladwell’s theories.

When I think of wildly successful people, people like Michelle Obama and Steve Jobs come to mind; my name usually does not appear on the list. Granted, I have not invented anything of use to the general public, or dedicated my life to any worthy cause, nor am I making oodles of money by anyone’s standards. But in other ways, am I not as successful as them? I have (generally) earned good grades, I have great friends, I am hardworking and independent, and I have skills that many people do not have. However, in the same vein, how much of my success can I really claim as my own? Just like Malcolm Gladwell observed in his book Outliers, there is always a lot more to success than there appears to be—and as I found out in the course of analyzing

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers, believes that working at something for 10,000 hours is required to achieve mastery and become a world class expert at anything. While this is a nice way of making it seem like anyone can be successful, it is simply not true. Some people will never achieve proficiency in a domain, no matter how much practice they put into it. There are a variety of factors that play into expertise besides practice and certain domains require much less practice than the magical 10,000 hour threshold that Gladwell established.

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

Malcolm Gladwell makes many debatable claims in his book “The Outliers”. One of these controversial topics is brought up in chapter three when he talks about a person’s IQ and how that relates to one’s success. After reading “Outliers” I believe that this is the most controversial topic. I agree with Malcolm Gladwell because there are a lot of people who are not really smart that are very successful, success can be viewed differently by different people, and by my own experiences on the U-High soccer team.

In chapter six of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell persuades that cultural legacies remain for generations and ought to affect how one behaves in certain circumstances. To validate his statement, Gladwell began telling a story of Harlan, Kentucky, a town in a mountainous region where there resides two bickering families; Howard and Turner. The “county was in an uproar” (pg.164) and the families were finishing each other off. Gladwell then began claiming the factor that drove the uproar was the “culture of honor” (pg.166), meaning the culture around highlands are aggressive due to the need to protect their livelihoods. This reveals that future generation in the highlands will be trained similar to their ancestors in order to maintain survival. Also,

Typically used for college sports, redshirting is now being applied to the American education system to kindergartners. In the book “Outliers: The Story of Success” by Malcolm Gladwell, redshirting (being held back a year to have some sort of advantage) happens when Gladwell goes into the sport of Canada: hockey. Gladwell continued on about redshirting by comparing all the players on the team and how all/most of their birthdays were in January, February, and March. He went on to explain that players with “cutoff” birthdays were going to be “ahead of the curve” because the will have the advantage if they are redshirted. This is not fair to the younger and maybe more talented kids for team selection.

Who is the real winner in life? The answer is right in that sentence, life. It comes in many different shapes and forces. In Outliers, Gladwell talks about rice paddies, and how this cultural life style has laid foundation to the ideas and values for future generations of Asian countries. As the chapter progresses it shifts to a math professor and a young lady named Renee, and how challenges affect the way we think.