Subscribe to our Blog
The Fault, Dear Brutus, Is Not in Our Stars, But In Our Schools
Margaret Wente’s column today takes on Malcolm Gladwell’s thesis in his book Outliers that phenomenally-successful people owe their success to three factors: a combination of a fierce drive to succeed; 10,000 hours of purposeful practice; and extremely lucky circumstances. Wente, while agreeing with the first two factors, would substitute extraordinary talent for lucky circumstances. She thinks that all the ambition and practice in the world will not result in élite performance if talent is lacking.
In a way, there’s not all that much difference between the two positions, in that for both Wente and Gladwell extraordinary accomplishment depends on the luck of the draw - lucky genes or lucky circumstances, take your pick. But there is in fact a crucial distinction in terms of the percentage of the population who can become accomplished performers. If Wente is right, only the very talented can achieve high-level performance. If Gladwell is right, high-level performance is possible for virtually everyone - although of course only a few individuals will be lucky enough to become superstars.
This distinction has important implications for educators. If Wente is right, then schools should be pretty much sorting institutions - identifying and supporting talented students. After all, in Wente’s scenario, there’s not much point in trying to teach calculus to kids who don’t have a math gene! But if Gladwell is right and élite performance is possible for most people, then schools should be trying to motivate students to reach for the stars and then providing them with the means to do so.
At School for Thought, it is our perception that schools lean strongly to Wente’s position - to the detriment of their students.
I do agree with the perception that schools will direct all their attention towards students who exhibit exceptional reading and writing ability, along with a talent or two. It has been my observations, that my dyslexic child in grades K to 6, became a victim of this practice, along with 2/3 of the rest of the students. I read a science research paper on why some dyslexics are successful, despite their poor reading and writing skills. In the paper, it discussed the traits of successful dyslexics, and the single trait that they all had in common, was lots of practice. The second trait, where they had a high interest in one or two areas such as science, writing, or ancient history. I took this to heart, and proceeded on a new road with my dyslexic child, using lots of practice, her interests, and combined the two, to improve weaknesses in reading and writing. This new road was taken, and spurred by the comments of the school. Comments such as, “Your child has received more than enough correct instruction in the classroom, more practice in math facts will not result in any improvements”. Another comment, that was common and told to me in different ways by educators was, “Your child does not display the same intelligence as our good readers.”
When I commence on my new road of lots of practice, improvement started to show within weeks, but the school offered no support, especially in areas of reading and writing mechanics. They did not approve of my methods at home, and felt strongly that my child should follow the same methods that is instructed in the classroom, using the same knowledge base.
My child steadily improve in small steps. By grade 7 , the hard work at home was paying off in terms of grades and remarkable achievements in public speaking, science awards, and math.
I can attest, that practice and lots of it is a tool that should be used and practiced by all. I believe all human beings have a talent or two, but for most of us in order to develop talents that our education system loves, we must have a firm foundation on reading, writing and numeracy first, before the hidden talents can be develop. As for luck, it was not a factor in my child, but others around me, including some educators would rather believe it was luck, than a lot of practice to overcome her learning problems.