Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell, is an interesting read. But I got to wondering about the message of the book. I understand that Gladwell maybe didn’t mean for it to have a message for educators. But, then again, maybe he did. I just don’t know. But I do know that the book left me unsatisfied as far as knowing what to do as an educator is concerned. OK, so timing, luck, opportunity, hard work, a culture of high demand are all important in creating outliers. The implications for educators seem to be that students should work hard and seize opportunities. The implications for teachers seem to be that we should try to create opportunities and encourage hard work. Beyond that? I dunno. We can’t change a lot of the things that Gladwell thinks are important, like when people are born, where they’re born, their families, their cultures. Then, too, I’m thinking that only a relatively small percentage of people can become outliers regardless of any of these things.
Gladwell does mention KIPP as an example of an educational program that shows dramatic results because it emphasizes a culture of hard work and achievement. He says the students in KIPP are chosen through a lottery system. Sounds great! One little issue, though. KIPP chooses through a lottery only those who’ve applied. If you don’t apply, then KIPP doesn’t put you in the lottery. Doesn’t even consider you. Now, I may be a little cynical about proposals to revolutionize public education, but probably if KIPP wants to go head-to-head with other schools, then it needs to select at random from all those potential students who live in a catchment area, regardless of whether they’ve applied. So, KIPP would include students who don’t want to go to school at all and those who don’t want to work hard and those who aren’t motivated to apply—in short, kids at random without any protective screen whatsoever. And KIPP would have to report on drop outs and students suspended or expelled.
Oh, never mind. If you’re looking for outliers… well, welcome to Lake Wobegon North, where all the children are not only above average, they’re all WAY above average!
Actually, Gladwell has some interesting observations. Only thing is (and he never proposed that purpose for his book), they don’t tell us much about how we go about making things better for kids in typical public schools.
Sphere: Related Content
I didn’t take any messages for education from the book. . .the main message seemed to be “talent and hard work aren’t enough. . .you need to be lucky. . .” Not a very cheering message, but I’m guessing he would say (and most of us would agree) that not everyone is going to be John Lennon or Bill Gates, and that’s just fine. Most of us want to be good at what we do, but not necessarily an outlier, and talent and hard work will get you that far, at the least. .but that’s not a terribly interesting book. . .
You must read Jay Mathews’ Work Hard. Be Nice. right away! A fantastic book — so good that I am forcing my 14-year old son to read it this summer. (Finally managed to browbeat him into reading the first chapter just two days ago. Ten minutes later, when he’d finished, he came downstairs to find me so he could say, “It’s really good.”)
I don’t know what the situation is now, but in the school’s early years KIPP students did not apply to the school. Feinberg & Levin recruited them. It was hard work. Many students were not interested in attending the school and some were openly hostile to the prospect. Recruitment efforts were particularly difficult in the Bronx.
Moreover, although I don’t know the population statistics here in NYC, there are enormously long waiting lists for charter schools. Surely those waiting lists include students who don’t want to go to school. In fact, if I had to bet, I would bet that the lists include a large number of kids who actively wish not to attend school precisely because they aren’t making it in the city’s public schools and they’ve developed an aversion to school.
Until very recently, that was always true of private schools. Private schools didn’t take the best students; they took the students who weren’t succeeding in public schools. (Lessons from Privilege: The American Prep School Tradition is probably a good source on this.)
At the end of Work Hard. Be Nice., Mathews says that he’s writing a second book on KIPP’s efforts to scale up — which are succeeding.
Here’s the final paragraph:
I would also like to thank in advance the many KIPP teachers, principals, and students in dozens of cities who are likely to be hearing from me in the coming years as I research a second book about the surprising growth of KIPP. There are now sixty-six KIPP schools, most of them performing as well as the first ones. That is not supposed to happen. Smart and experienced analysts have often pointed out that initially successful schools or school ideas almost always lose potency when the next generation of leaders tries to produce the same results on many more campuses in new and different circumstances.
KIPP seems to be defying that expectation. In this book, I have presented the best evidence we have so far on why that is happening, but there is a good deal more to learn. I have to find out what is going on, not only at the many new KIPP schools but at the several other schools that use similar methods and whose results are approaching KIPP’s. In the search for the best schools, I still have a lot of work to do.
For my money, KIPP tells me a great deal about what ordinary public schools should be — especially now that I’ve taken my typical son out of an extravagantly funded, high-SES public school in the suburbs and transferred him to a Jesuit school in the city. Here’s Mathews again:
Simply watching KIPP teachers teach makes the best case for what Levin and Feinberg have created. Many older visitors say the KIPP atmosphere reminds them of the inner-city Catholic schools they once attended, with warm but strict teachers whose commitment to their students is motivated by far more than a weekly paycheck.
That is exactly the culture we found at our son’s Catholic high school: high joy/high discipline.
It’s like a happy military school.
Another thing.
At my son’s new school this year, I met a speech pathologist who provides free student advocacy as her form of service.
She is raising her niece, a teen with Asperger syndrome, whom she has enrolled in a small private school where she is doing very well. This is not a private school for students with learning disabilities, mind you. It is a classic, small, non-elite private school. I doubt anyone there has special training in teaching methods for students with autism. (Not that it would be bad for them to have such training!)
She told me about a client, who also has Asperger syndrome, who had just been accepted by the high school our sons are attending. “He’ll do very well here,” she said. “The boys report to the same adult in the morning and again in the afternoon at the end of the day, and the high structure will keep him on track. He’ll just need some strategies for dealing with his social deficits.”
Here in my town two boys we know, both with ADHD & both attending public school on a 504, are transferring to Catholic high schools next year. In their new schools they won’t have 504s and they won’t need them. The necessary “modifications” – high structure & high oversight by the grownups – are part of the school culture.
High structure/high joy/high discipline: I don’t see a reason why such a culture should be impossible to create and sustain inside a public school. I’m sure there are public schools that do have such a culture.
The fact remains, however, that the culture inside most public schools is nothing like the happy in loco parentis environment of KIPP schools and good Catholic schools.
Catherine has it exactly right. The KIPP schools locate themselves in disadvantaged neighborhoods and very actively recruit students from the low-income families that surround them. As a consequence, more than 80 percent of their students are low-income, as defined by the school lunch program, and 95 percent are black or Hispanic.