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Argumentative Essay On Outliers Malcolm Gladwell

870 Words4 Pages

Success: Belief vs. Reality Many people in the U.S. assume that as long as they work tirelessly and strive towards their goal they will achieve it because they were told to have that attitude while growing up. Malcolm Gladwell thinks otherwise. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is a book that spreads the truth upon success and explains the different variables that can exponentially affect one’s career, and their future decisions. Gladwell touches on the conversation of whether the age of children really matters when enrolling them into school, stating that the older the child is the more likely they will be given greater opportunities. Gladwell also brings up many valid points that challenge the systems for education and sports, criticizing the …show more content…

Claiming that sports such as Canadian professional hockey are a meritocracy, he states “.. In Canada the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey is in January.(24)” By this he means that a child who is only one month away from being a year older than he or she should be, they are still allowed to play for their age division. With that being said, the children that are born in January are more mature and stronger for their age due to the fact that they were born many months before a child that would have been born in September, giving them an advantage over their teammates. In Gladwell’s view, “If you make a decision about who is good and who is not good at an early age; if you separate the “talented” from the “untalented”; and if you provide the “talented” with a superior experience, then you’re going to end up giving a huge advantage to that small group of people born closest to the cutoff date.(25)” Gladwell suggests that grouping the better kids together and pushing the less talented to the side will eventually lead to the “better” kids continuing to advance to higher levels while the “less talented” will not get any better. Ending the favoritism towards choosing older children in sports because they are more mature is important, because it bases the selection of players on age rather than skill

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