preview

Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell: How Poverty Affects Success

Decent Essays
Open Document

How Poverty Affects Success Many kids in the United States have been affected by poverty at some point in their lives. In fact, one in five children have been affected by poverty. A survey was done within the last year by the Scholastic company that interviewed a group of the State Teachers of the Year and asked them what they thought were some of the effects of poverty. Some popular answers were that it affects the way you perform in school greatly and that we need more anti-poverty programs to help out with these children. Poverty affects the success of students in many ways. These include not having the academic achievement that more advantaged kids did, not having experiences other kids did, and not having the early development they needed. …show more content…

This is because their families don’t have the time or money to buy things for them or to take them to places to work on the tasks they need to work on. This ties into the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. In this book, Gladwell looks at success in a very different way, including “the ten thousand hour rule.” He explains that the rule says you need ten thousand hours of practice at something to be an expert at that specific task, and that when you become and expert you’re more likely to be successful. This relates back to children in poverty because these children don’t get their ten thousand hours of practice at a certain task. They don’t get the ten thousand hours in because their families do not provide them the opportunity to get the ten thousand hours in. This also relates to Gladwell’s book Outliers because he talks about how people have to have opportunities to get in the practice you need to be successful. This can relate to Gladwell’s book in one more way: the structure of people’s families. He states that families in poverty are less likely to be involved with their child, in sports or in academics, because they do not get the chance to be. This is just one of the many ways 3poverty affects the success of …show more content…

For example, children who grew up in poverty when they were very young are thirty percent less likely to finish high school than the children who did not grow up in poverty. Most of the time children who drop out of high school are less likely to get a high paying job, therefore causing them to be more likely to be in poverty as an adult. Also, some children who grew up in poverty will not be encouraged to do things. Some children might even develop a brain deformity or a language barrier. Some might develop a disease or a behavioral disorder. These are all likely outcomes of children who grew up in poverty while they were still developing. Another possibility is that the child didn’t get proper nourishment while they were still in their mother’s stomach. This is a very likely outcome of a child who grew up in poverty because poverty is linked to malnutrition. These are some of the many harmful things that could happen to a child in poverty that could affect

Get Access