George Gladwell's Outliers

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.

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

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).

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.

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,

In the book, The Outliers: The Story of Success, written by Malcom Gladwell he described an outlier as someone who does something out of the ordinary or different, something that lies outside the box. His beliefs about people being successful are easily supported. He reviews the lives of extremely successful people and how they obtained success while utilizing their social interactions, last name and distinct events that occurred throughout their life. His writing throughout the book was sturdy and powerful. Gladwell writes effectively to get his point across by using deductive organization, repetition and logos.

“The Matthew Effect” in Gladwell’s Outliers is an assessment on the reasons of high levels of success. “The Matthew Effect” Is the observations of successful people who have gain more while people who lack something find it harder to achieve. It describes people who already have reputation are often positioned in situations where they gain more recognition and those that do not have reputation usually struggle to accomplish more. In addition, children who gain reading skills early as a result, find other areas of education easier to understand compared to the children who do not gain reading skills in an early age.

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.

The author, Gladwell's, research focuses on KIPP Academy a public middle school in the South Bronx, New York City. Children enrolled in KIPP live in the poorest neighborhoods and are randomly chosen by lottery to join the school. Their goal is for students to acquire an opportunity of education similar to higher class student. KIPP proves that despite their economic situation, students can achieve high academic grades with time and dedication. They believe students should spend more time in school studying to become successful. Students vacations are limited since they make student’s learning procrastinate

Malcolom Gladwell wrote Outliers to inform readers on how to achieve success in life. It looks into the lives of other successful people and shows how practice, equal opportunity, and the help of others one can achieve the success that many others have achieved.

Many paths to success can be taken, however spending 10,000 hours practicing in order to hone your skill might not be enough though.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers (2008), he famously claims that 10,000 hours of practice is the “magic number of greatness” needed to become a master in any field (41). To support this, he cites Anders Ericsson’s 1993 study that “elite [piano] performers had each totaled ten thousand hours of practice” (39). However, his understanding of Ericsson’s study was incorrect. Ericsson later pushed back in a 2012 paper, “Our main point was that the best group of violinists had spent significantly more hours practising than the two groups of less accomplished groups of expert violinists, and vastly more time than amateur musicians. There is nothing magical about exactly 10,000 hours.”

Mathematics is a concept that can be defined as “the systematic treatment of magnitude, relationships between figures and forms, and relations between quantities expressed symbolically” (“The Definition of Language”). As a whole, it is a form of communication. The dictionary definition of language is “a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition” (“The Definition of Math”). It is clear that both areas of knowledge require a verbal communication used to connect with other people. Presumably, both mathematics and language need each other to be fully understood. This concept can be seen and proven through Chapter 8: Rice Paddies and Math Test in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers as well as a real life situation.

Fear's tendencies are much akin to that of a parasitic worm; forever burrowing with hunger insatiable, altering and manipulating its host if given dominion.

The book “Outliers: The Story of Success,”was written by Malcolm Gladwell was published in 2008. “Outliers,” was one of Gladwell’s third best-selling non fictional books (Locklear, 2016). In 1984, Malcolm Gladwell graduated from the University of Toronto and moved to the United States to study journalism (Leonhardt, 2008). Gladwell provided a different approach to writing stories which caught the eye of The Washington Post landing himself a job (Leonhardt, 2008). From 1987 to 1996, Gladwell was a reporter for the Washington Post (Gladwell, 2007). With many years of experience working at the Washington Post he moved up to journalism working for The New Yorker. In working for the New Yorker Gladwell was able to publish journals that included