Book Review – Outliers: The story of success by Malcolm Gladwell
It is popularly believed that hard work alone makes individuals successful in life. No wonder, many have bought into the belief that successful people are self-made. Gladwell challenges the accepted beliefs on success in his book, Outliers: The story of success. He discusses the societal and cultural factors that favor certain individuals to become successful through many case studies focused on certain well-known personalities representing various walks of life. According to Gladwell, outlier or a person who is a cut above the ordinary is in fact a beneficiary of time and opportunity.
The major argument Gladwell makes in the book is that individuals often wrongly interpret the concept of success. For instance, success is more often attributed to a collection of personal qualities in an individual like genius, motivation and talent while in fact success stories feature individuals who are lucky enough to enjoy certain hidden advantages like amazing opportunities and other legacies. Gladwell compares a successful person to a healthy tall tree in a forest amid short trees. While the fact that the tallest tree comes from a healthy seed cannot be denied, Gladwell argues that the tree grew tall since it was sown in good soil and there were no trees nearby to block sunlight when it grew. The author centers his argument that successful people have some advantages over unsuccessful ones by taking inspiration from Mathew 25:29 in the Holy Bible. The Bible verse says that whoever already has will gain more, and whoever has little whatever they have will be taken away from them. Thus, Gladwell’s chief theme of the book is that those who already have some benefits will find it more convenient to gain further benefits as those who enjoy no benefits continue to get nothing. Using the same concept, he famously calls “The Mathew effect,” Gladwell tries to demonstrate how things upon which individuals have no control at all, like their parentage and date of birth, are directly responsible for their success. In the very first chapter he employs the argument to show how certain Canadian hockey players were successful since they were born during the winter months. Similarly, Gladwell cites popular individuals and groups belonging to various professions like Bill Gates and The Beatles who became successful in their respective fields, thanks to the circumstances that favored them, to emphasize his argument.
Gladwell’s second argument is that cultural legacy too is a powerful factor in determining an individual’s success or failure. He reiterates that success can be better understood by taking seriously cultural legacies of societies. He says that cultural legacies remain virtually intact even after generations, which plays a significant role in influencing the behavior and attitudes of individuals. For instance, he demonstrates through an air crash involving a Korean airlines flight, which was common those days due to rigid power structure that existed among pilots, that a change in workplace culture can convert failure to success: nowadays, the Korean airlines is known for high degree of collaboration in the cockpit and safety ratings. Similarly, Gladwell interestingly explains how Chinese cultural legacy of growing paddy makes Chinese students intelligent in mathematics today. In those days, constructing terraces for traditional paddy cultivation in China was demanding. The Chinese have taught the art of constructing paddy terraces, which requires counting and simple mathematics to children that makes the Chinese children learn counting even before an average American student starts to count. Gladwell through the Chinese paddy cultivation experience clarifies that unlike the popular belief that learning math is a skill or an inborn trait, the cultural heritage of the Chinese society that is known for persistence and hard work is all the more important to make someone successful.
Gladwell’s book is closely connected to education through its eye-opening insights and challenges. He implies that success is possible for everyone provided individuals learn to associate and collaborate with others that would pave the way for success. Gladwell’s opinions and insights provide new ideas to educators towards building a favorable environment for young students. His themes are closely related to education since educators in a school cannot succeed by themselves; no matter how talented and knowledgeable they are, they depend on each other in an educational system. Gladwell asserts that more often rigid rules deter achievement. Therefore, establishing the right student-friendly rules is the key to help students succeed. For instance, educators need to relook at the structure of their schools and analyze who is currently benefitted by it and who is not. Structures or systems that impede the progress of students need to be removed to give success opportunities to everyone. Gladwell also warns educators that success in one’s report card necessarily does not assure success in real life. Conversely, there is more to success than a student’s IQ and it is the responsibility of the school system to educate students on this ‘extra thing.’ Beyond helping students to learn curriculum-driven subjects and lessons, schools also have the responsibility of helping students to discover their real potential. This warrants school administrators to provide a learning atmosphere that promotes and values the talents and skills of students towards facilitating them to succeed in their professional and personal life.
Gladwell’s book inspired me to appreciate the importance of cultural heritage in determining one’s success. As a future educationist I can clearly see my additional role in understanding the cultural backgrounds of my students before suggesting them personal improvement plans. I believe each student requires unique professional development plans incorporating their cultural heritage and social values so as to achieve success, which is possible only if I show interest in learning about their past generations. Gladwell also reiterates the importance of integrating complexity, autonomy and link between an individual’s efforts and rewards with his work culture so as to enjoy the profession. As a future educationist aspiring to have a challenging and rewarding career in education, this teaching of Gladwell is quite valuable to me. I will keep this in mind while imparting education to my students so as to develop a meaningful and rewarding career. Besides, incorporating complexity in the education system would help my students to get the best coaching and guidance always. The author’s is at his best when he emotionally appeals to the readers to convert hard work to meaningful rewards to avoid someone with an excellent work culture feel as though he is undergoing a prison term by working hard. I promise to enjoy hard work as an educator, since Gladwell’s valuable advice would motivate me to explore new meanings to my efforts each day.
Apart from providing various inspiring stories of personal success, Gladwell interestingly delves still deeper to find out why and how individuals succeed. I find the book to be stimulating and moving. In fact, the diversity of the stories ranging from Canadian to Chinese experiences gives the stories more credibility and liveliness. My attitude about success has changed since I read this book. However, even as the stories are well-fitting to the situation to explain his views on success, I personally feel that the studies are not deeply researched. For example, when speaking about the success of The Beatles, he says that practice alone was responsible for their success towards proving his 10,000 hour rule. However, in practice several other factors like perseverance and discipline would have helped the team to succeed. Even as the concepts he talks about are not new, Gladwell’s art of telling stories to suit the occasion and his enthusiasm in grabbing the attention of the reader makes his reading engaging and interesting.
