Following my reading of Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent text David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, I was compelled to write a letter discouraging further study of the book in the English Language Arts Transactional Focus course at École secondaire Oak Park High School.
Earlier this winter, in my own ELA Transactional Focus course, I was assigned a selection of adult, nonfiction pieces to acquire and read. The end goal of this task was to determine its fate with future students. I started the book having many high expectations, but by the second chapter was highly disappointed. Fortunately, this task was facilitated by a book wholly unsuitable for an audience even slightly younger than the intended.
For a popular science book, like David and Goliath, to be effective in an educational
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This is simply not the case in Gladwell’s text. I found the inconsistent and flawed reasoning renders the book a] easy to dismiss (which defeats the purpose of reading it and b] an unsuitable example of sustainable writing. A student could reasonably mimic Gladwell’s wrongdoings in his own work and, worse, think his errors are a valid from of transactional communication. It would be educationally devastating, for instance, to see the writer manipulate a student into using his easy shortcut techniques. When Gladwell yarns a tale about dyslexic “farm boy” (60) turned lawyer, David Boies, he intentionally misinterprets the data. It is not factor A, dyslexia, that causes factor C, a successful law firm, it is factor B, good listening. Legal success and dyslexia don’t have the direct connection that Gladwell implies. This
In his book “Beyond the Culture Wars: How teaching the conflicts can revitalize American education” Gerald Graff, describes his experience in his youth of disliking books and the discourse of literature. The excerpt “Disliking Books” from that book shares the story of Gerald’s experience with early education to his collegiate experience which then later inspired him to become a literature professor. Through sharing his experiences in his youth and at college Graff shares the added value that can come through adversity and education. Born into an educated middle-class Jewish family in an ethnic area of Chicago, a rougher side of town.
It takes many other, intrinsic forms (that often happen by chance) for that individual to grasp the top of his field. Gladwell utilize a mix of research and anecdotes in order to precisely bring his point to his readers. His simple and straightforward style of writing propose that he and the reader are good buddies, tempting to pathos to help the reader relate to Gladwell and see his point of view. (Hauk, 2009) This mellow style of writing also appeals to a regular reader: it not only cause the book clear to discern, dissimilar to scholarly nonfiction books on the market, but also makes the reader more interested in the topic because he doesn’t have to toil through the entire academic vocabulary found in other nonfiction works.
In 2003, the nonfiction author Jon Krakauer published his book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. Motivated to expand the typically Islam-focused understanding of religious extremism that dominated the U.S. after 9/11, Under the Banner of Heaven addresses fundamentalism and the violence that often accompanies it in a totally different context – the Mormon faith. Krakauer tells in parallel the history of Joseph Smith and the founding of his church, and of the modern-day extremist offshoots that embrace Mormon beliefs but do not belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). By juxtaposing the brutal double murder committed by the fundamentalist Lafferty brothers in 1984 with the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre
Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point; How Little Things Make A Big Difference, he introduces The Power of Context introduces readers to a topic of human behavior,crime, and why the environment matters. The people most likely to be a reader of and interested in the topic of humanities would be people in authoritative roles, managers, owners, and leaders, as well as the everyday parent. In this chapter of Gladwell’s book, he argues in favor of the “Power of Context Theory,” explaining how the “Broken Windows Theory” works and listing studies and observations to prove his main argument that the immediate environment indeed plays a significant role in the behavior of people. To try and convince readers of his argument, Gladwell provides evidence
Gladwell wants to present his readers with the
She inserts pathos once again to elicit feelings of sympathy towards the relationship between herself and the characters in the books she read, be it as slaves, housewives, or simply not present in the first place. Seeing as her argument thus far evokes a considerable feeling of empathy for her side of the story, with all of its facts and references, it is a minor letdown that Brooks can hardly be bothered to put in a citation of her information on Columbia’s newest reading requirement. While it is a relief that her argument is not being ignored, she could have proven her point more by describing the significance of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. A brief search for the book reveals it to be about a man journeying to connect with his past and his self-importance. Had Brooks included this one extra sentence, she could have shown the significance of diverse authors and stories in her curriculum, but instead left it ambiguous and seemingly
The author Gladwell helped the reader to reach his message by providing characters with common experiences and turn them into positive experiences. He used characters to help the reader to find hidden messages. Gladwell was trying to make hidden messages easy to locate as a person reads deeper in the chapters within the book, he made this clear since the beginning of his book. The importance of the book is demonstrates how a legacy that includes culture can have failure and can be turned around into success just by an off chance (Locklear, 2016). Gladwell gives the reader a sense of empowerment showing the public to feel self-righteous because they too can become a famous song writer or athlete if they to put in their 10,000 hours of dedicated work to what they love to do (Locklear,
Novels flourish a persons imagination and present advances in their independent knowledge. Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 displays a society deprived of novels, leading Montag to the realization of affects novels have on people. Montag fought for what he believed in, the right to read and learn from numerous novels, containing various topics ranging from innocent child books to vulgarity stricken novels. “The School Library versus the School Board: An Exploration of the Book Banning Trend of the 1980s” contains several arguments Montag would agree with, such as, “Even when a book contains language that is not appropriate for everyday use or describes unsavory ideas or feelings, the ability of the book to have a positive impact on the reader or provoke discussion or awareness is not necessarily diminished.” This quote symbolizes the positive viewpoints an “objectable book” most definitely possesses.
Her full use of strong language diminishes pieces of literature’s worth and questions their true significance. She claims this in a critical tone by stating, “Like most parents who have, against all odds, preserved a lively and still evolving passion for good books, I find myself, each September, increasingly appalled by the dismal lists of texts that my sons are doomed to waste a school year reading”(Prose, 176). She uses words like dismal to describe the book choices students would have to read according to the curriculum of the educational system. By using words like dismal, she expresses her feeling of disappointment towards the curriculum. She
"There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis" Some of life 's most critical decisions happen in a split second. In the novel Blink, Malcolm Gladwell teaches about the power of split second thinking and deepens our understanding of the ability of our own minds. Connecting to the experiences of others mentioned in Blink teaches you things about yourself that you have never known or merely thought about before. It allows you to reflect on past experiences and decisions that you have made and wonder how you came to the conclusions that you did. "Did they know why they knew?
Though I was relieved to know that I was not doomed to a life of unintelligence, this only confirmed that I would have to work harder than everyone else in academics. Instead of crippling me, this empowered me. I used dyslexia as a motivator to work harder in every area of my life. Due to this work ethic, peers and administrators select me for leadership roles.
Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451 uses the events of a twenty-fourth century fictional world where all intellectual curiosity and hunger for knowledge must be quelled for the good of the state—for conformity—to illustrate to readers of today that human society can easily become oppressive and strictly regimented unless it changes its tendency toward suppression of an individual’s innate rights. In the fictional world of Guy Montag and Captain Beatty, it is believed that without ideas, everyone will conform, and as a result, everyone should be happy. When books and new ideas are available to people, conflict and unhappiness occurs. However, Montag’s encounters with Clarisse, the old woman, and Faber ignite in Montag the spark of doubt about this approach.
“I’m not thinking, I’m just doing like I’m told, When do I start working things on my own”(Bradbury 94) says Montag, the protagonist from the books “Fahrenheit 451”. From all those people, he and some few more were the ones that understood how important reading was. In addition experts at “The Sun”, a program dealing with teens, says, “Growing number of secondary pupils are reading books too easy for them—raising fears they won’t spot fake news. ”(Davidson, sun). Lynn Davidson, an expert at “The Sun”, also adds, “Many sit
- Diction and form and how he sneaks emotional manipulation into his examples and analogies (Pg 155) - The values of an individual tied to success (Pg 136-138) - Gladwell dispels popular myths and historically believed generalizations about success (Pg 84-90) Paragraph 2: Gladwell’s use of emotion to persuade the reader by the need of knowledge about their corrupt values, is present throughout the book because he has grasped the concept and let it bleed into the other factors of his success in persuasion of his thesis. - Gladwell’s use of emotion is so strong and influential to the reader because one’s future is so significant and the main concern of people’s lives for a large portions of their time. (Pg
If not in a safe classroom environment, where is a better setting to expose children to real world issues and behaviors. While there is heavy emphasis placed on the importance of breaking the status quo and the law in particular, such behaviors demonstrated in "Fahrenheit 451" encourage problem solving and individual thinking in the minds of students. As stated by Grace Chen, "The attempt to expose students to challenging topics and issues, as many teachers support, is not intended to force students into a certain mode of thought; moreover, the books are to serve as opportunities for students to think, theorize, question, and explore(8). " Books like "Fahrenheit 451" truly foreshadow this future of complete censorship and lack of individual thinking. Huckleberry Fin demonstrates critical thinking, and promotes the understanding of the time period it is set it.