In my Gifted and Talented class, G+T, we, the students, are reading a fascinating book. It is Outliers the Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. This book discusses how people have achieved success but in a more in depth perspective. Outliers does not show how success may be achieved, but it shows how it was achieved through people with reasons least expected. For example, 40% of the players on elite Canadian hockey teams were born in the months January, February, and March. Those people born in those months could participate in hockey as they turn 10, the minimal age. Those children would gain practice which, in turn, would act as an advantage over someone who turns 10 in December, someone who would have to wait nearly 12 months to start practicing. This advantage accumulates over the years, and it is known as accumulative advantage. This is what allowed the January birthday hockey players to succeed. This is how Malcolm Gladwell presents how success was achieved, through things normally overlooked.
Recently, my class just finished reading chapters 3 and 4, Trouble with Geniuses Parts 1 and 2. These two chapters primarily revolved around the importance of IQ. As it turns out, it really is not all it is thought to be. Of course IQ has a major impact on you if you had an IQ of 90 when the average is 100. However, once you reach around 120, the height of your IQ has little meaning. The intellectual difference between IQ’s of 130 and 140 is not as big as 85 to 95. Someone with an IQ of 130 has the same chances as someone with an IQ of 180 at winning the Nobel Prize. This is because of another topic expressed by Gladwell known as entitlement. The idea of entitlement is that someone feels entitled to ask questions or ask for help. Children who grew up with entitlement were not afraid to ask for help, and thus gained an important life skill, practical intelligence (a.k.a. common sense, street smarts). These children used common knowledge to gain information or assistance in something they needed. Most middle-class families can provide entitlement to their children; however, most lower class families cannot. Children of lower class families learn to be independent rather than entitled. Two perfect examples would include Christopher Langan and Lewis Terman’s Termites. Chris Langan grew up in a lower class family, struggled with life as a child, and has an IQ of 195. To be terse, he flunked out of college from lacking in practical knowledge and had to work as a bouncer. Likewise, there was a man named Lewis Terman who gathered children with high IQ’s, and he tracked them for the rest of their lives. These children were known as Termites. They were split up into groups A, B, and C once they reached adulthood, and they were ranked according to their success. The C group, lowest ranking, were filled with people who grew up in poor areas and failed to gain practical knowledge. The point of this exceedingly long explanation is you cannot make it in this world if you try alone, without asking for help.
Back to Chris Langan, I personally found him successful. Today, he is married, working on a farm in Missouri, and working on a theory of the universe in his spare time. When he was interviewed by Gladwell for the book, Chris said that he was content with his life. As long as you are happy and financially able to support yourself, I say you are successful. So what if he flunked college, he is happy, and that is what really matters.
On my behalf, I will probably take away a lot from these two past chapters. I never thought that simply asking for help could do one person so much in life. I always thought that the ability to be independent was the most important thing. I guess Gladwell proved me wrong. From now on, I will remember the importance of entitlement, and I will remember to exercise it when I can. Furthermore, I have learned you do not need a massively high IQ to get places. My IQ is definitely higher than 120, but it is no Einstein, 150 (for the record, I know what my own IQ is). With this knowledge of practical intelligence I have one last thing to say, Nobel Prize, here I come!
