Gladwell loves a good story based on some semblance of the connectedness of the world. And he’s such a good storyteller that the reader can’t help being carried along with his ideas. I read and loved Blink. I read and loved The Tipping Point. Now I’ve read and loved Outliers. But are any of these valid if they are studied carefully and scientifically, rather than anecdotally? Outliers seems grounded in basic American common sense: People are successful when they work hard. (And, it helps, when circumstances are fortuitous for their success, he adds.) I’m still thinking, hard, about the last chapter, which concludes with a study done on students’ reading and math acquisition over the summer months and during the school year. The study splits up children according to their SES: low, medium, and high. Here’s the startling conclusion: low and middle SES kids learn MORE during the school year than high SES kids. Odd. And, further, in the summer, low SES kids learn little or even lose ground while high SES kids make tremendous gains. Gladwell certainly knows how to tell a good tale.
