"Waiting for Superman"

 “Waiting for Superman” is a documentary directed by Davis Guggenheim in which the education system in America is strongly criticized.  Through all of the statistics which the documentary evinces, one stuck in my mind.  By the year 2020, nearly 150 million high-paying, high skill jobs will be available in the United States.  However, there will only be 50 million Americans will the education and skill to fill these positions. To get to the root of the problem, Guggenheim starts from elementary school and works his way up, carefully analyzing the subtle changes throughout the education system.  Nevertheless, Guggenheim focuses specifically on high schools within the inner city which have a reputation as schools with high dropout rates and poor academics.  He refers to such schools as “dropout factories”.   Most children living in the inner city will end up at one of these dropout factories, and inevitably be unable to go to college and achieve the success that some students across the nation are able to achieve.  There is however a way out.  There are a small number of schools within the area which are known in the area known as “Lottery Schools”.  These schools get children in poor, struggling neighborhoods out and put them on their way to success.  However, admission is only possible to lottery.

            The documentary inadvertently ties in to the two books relating to success which we read in class titled Outliers by Maclolm Gladwell and Mindset by Carol S. Dweck.  In his book Outliers, Gladwell insists that success is based primarily on luck and being in a particular place at a particular time.  It is unfortunate, but true that the children living in inner city neighborhoods with drop out factories for schools cannot get out of poverty without winning at one of the lottery schools.  This does however support Gladwell’s main idea.  Dweck can also be related to the documentary “Waiting for Superman”.  Dweck says that success is based only on one’s mindset.  The documentary suggests that school administrators and teachers are stuck within the fixed mindset and therefore are unable to better schools for the students.  The students, who have the focus in the documentary, however possessed a growth mindset with a natural desire to grow and expand their knowledge.

            Although the reason that these “lottery schools” are so successful is based on the better allocation of financial resources and longer school day, perhaps there is another “way out” for the students who cannot make it into the lottery schools.  It has been scientifically suggested that boys and girls learn differently, so why not simply separate them to promote a better education?  Most schools across the nation who have converted to the single-sex classroom have seen improvement in test scores.  I mean, the education system doesn’t appear as if it can get much worse in some of these inner city schools, so what is there to lose?  I went to a high school which boasted about its reputation in academics and I know that I cannot relate to students in these tough situations where a good education is based on a series of numbers and letters.  I would however like to think that a positive change will come for these students and educators will set aside their fixed mindsets in an effort to secure the possibility of a better educated America.

Argument FOR Gender-divided classrooms

                Whether or not, we as a society want to admit it the education system in the United States is failing its students and thus destroying the future of the country.  Just to exemplify the severity of this problem, I would like to share a statistic.  According to the documentary titled “Waiting for Superman”, by the year 2020, nearly 150 million high-paying, high skill jobs will be available in the United States.  However, there will only be 50 million Americans will the education and skill to fill these positions.  With numbers like that, does it seem responsible to do absolutely nothing?

                It has been scientifically suggested that boys and girls learn differently.  So why not simply separate the boys and girls during certain classes to see if this is true? For further emphasize and support this point, we did conducted own research by performing a study.   In the study, surveys were given to middle school students from three different school districts to ask them about their opinions on various topics relating to academics, including gender-divided classrooms.   When the survey results came back, we learned that boys and girls, as well as educators believe that there is a difference in the ways that the two sexes learn.  The survey results also suggested a significant difference in the confidence level of boys and girls in subjects such as math and science.  So now perhaps it’s time to consider how to fix these problems.

Although there is no guarantee that what we are suggesting will fix all the problems with the education system, it does provide a basis for which administrators can expand upon and sculpt out their own plan with all other considerations such as financial resources in mind.  However, the solution we are providing is not so black and white.  We are by no means suggesting that ALL classes should be separated at all times.  As Mark Twain one said, “''Too much of anything is bad, but too much whiskey is just enough''.   Now if you completely ignore the latter half of that sentence, you will realize that the great American author is right.  And we collectively agree as a group.  It seems pointless to make all classrooms single-sex classrooms.  This would be like performing a scientific experiment without a control group.  It would also inadvertently promote gender stereotypes.  Therefore, our group has proposed a change in the very structure of the week’s schedule.  From Monday thru Thursday, students would be placed in single sex classrooms, but only for the subjects of math and science.  On Friday, however, students will be in a coeducational classroom to make sure that both the boys and girls are on the same level of understanding of the subject.  The Friday with coeducational classes will also allow boys and girls to have social interactions with each other, thereby promoting success without promoting gender stereotypes.  But as mentioned before, this will not immediately fix all the problems with our education system.  That will take years and years of fine tuning, as well as a change to the overall curriculum, but we will leave that in the hands of school administrators.  This would simply just be a step in the right direction.

Should schools consider gender-divided classrooms?

The debate about gender-divided classrooms has become a hot-button topic in recent years.  It has been around ever since the relatively recent realization that males and females think, and even learn differently.  The specific relationship between gender and education isn’t explicitly or extensively talked about in both Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell or Mindset by Carol Dweck, but it is brushed upon.

In Outliers, Gladwell mentions a study done by Alan Schoenfeld, a math professor at Berkley.  In his study, he recorded a woman named Renee as she solved an eighth-grade level mathematics problem.  When she was unable to succeed at first, she continued trying harder and harder, until she finally arrived at the answer.  Schoenfeld recalls that it took more than twenty minutes for her to solve this middle school level math problem, but he believes that her relentless efforts were something that one can no longer see in students today (Gladwell 2008).  Now was this because she was a female?  If a male were placed in the identical situation, would he respond differently?  Carol Dweck insists that this is a possibility.  In her book, she mentions the gender gap in math and science.  She suggests that “women’s trust in people’s assessments” (Dweck, pg. 79, 2006) plays a large role in widening the gender gap in math and science.  She further supports her claims by mentioning that in grade school classrooms, “boys got eight times more criticism than girls for their conduct” (Dweck, pg 79, 2006).  This is turn, leads to boys becoming less sensitive and less responsive to people’s assessments of them.  Because girls are more responsive to people’s assessments of them, they strive to prove themselves in subjects like math and science where there is an evident gender gap, just as Renee did at Berkley University.

This is partially supported yet contradicted by a recent study which was featured in Newsweek magazine which illustrated the steady decline of the average test scores of boys in recent years (Ellison 2010).  On one hand, this study suggests that boys have lower test scores in all subjects, including math and science; which definitely contradicts what Dweck very explicitly states.  But on the other hand, maybe it only appears that the scores of male students are dropping because female students are trying harder to push themselves and discrediting the stereotype that female students don’t perform as well in math and science.  Dweck may suggest that the male students are starting to possess fixed mindsets because they are running with the stereotype that female students won’t perform as well as them and therefore are failing. 

See, that’s the thing about all these studies.  It is hard to form an opinion about anything with many of these studies because certain studies don’t provide enough clarification; and sometimes even completely contradict one another.  So when someone may ask me my opinion on gender-divided classrooms, I can give them concrete reasons as to why gender divided classrooms may be beneficial through one study.  But then I can support the other side as well by saying that females are obviously closing the gender gaps in math and science and surpassing the male students.  At the same time, however, don’t gender-divided classrooms promote the stereotypes that female students don’t perform as well in math and science?  If the male students are separated from the female students, the female students wouldn’t be exposed to the male students and their better test scores.  If schools were to consider gender-divided classrooms, wouldn’t that only make it harder for female to students to achieve the higher test scores which male students already possess? Therefore, gender-divided classrooms could be a positive or negative thing for schools across America.  Whether gender-divided classrooms should be considered remains a question that can only be answered by school administrators.

Dweck, C.S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

Ellison, J. (2010, June 22). The new segregation debate.Newsweek. Retrieved February 17, 2011

Gladwell, M. (2008).Outliers: The story of success. New York, NY: Little, Brown, and Company.

Are girls different than boys?

It certainly is difficult to choose a place to start to answer such a question.  Aside from the obvious anatomical differences, males and females also seem to think differently.  Let’s take for example the two books, Mindset and Outliers.  Both of these books focus on the idea of success and how to achieve it, but one was written by a male and the other a female. Not only do the writing styles of the two authors differ drastically, but even their ideologies are completely contradicting.  The author of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell, claims that success is almost entirely dependent on opportunities which present themselves throughout life and almost completely out of the hands of one who is trying to achieve success ( Gladwell 2008).  Carol Dweck, the author of Mindset, on the other hand likes to believe that one’s success is in one’s control and is entirely governed by mindset (Dweck 2006).  Although we cannot say for certain that all males will agree with Gladwell and all females will agree with Dweck, it appears that each author’s ideologies partially reflect their respective masculinity and femininity.

            But when we shy away from these books and look at other studies and articles relating to differences in success relating to gender differences, we can also infer certain differences in the minds of men and women.  According to the American Council of Education, women have made up almost sixty percent of enrollments at American colleges since the year 2000.  Women also tend to have higher grades and drop out from college less than men (Williams 2010).  But simply knowing that statistics and information like this relating to differences in gender and success exist is not enough.  Then comes the “why?”.  Why are men and women so different when it comes to success?  Specifically, why do more women go on to college?  Is it because more women possess growth mindsets and can learn from mistakes to expand their knowledge (Dweck 2006)?  Or perhaps it is because more women have parents who encourage success in higher education, and thus are more likely to have the right opportunities to want to go to college ( Gladwell 2008).

            However, I do not believe that the answer is quite so simple.  The minds of males and females seem to work so differently.  There are so many different studies out there providing information about the differences in academic ability between the two genders.  Some say that men are better and math and science, whereas women excel at subjects which involve abstract thought like writing and art.  But with so many different studies out there, it’s tremendously difficult to agree with them all.  Two studies about the same subject may come up with completely different results.

            In the end, the truth behind the differences between males and females and why they exist lies within our minds.  It feels to me that the research and studies that we, as a society, do create these differences between males and females.  Without society’s studies into the minds of men and women, we wouldn’t know that more women go to college; or that men excel at certain subject and women excel at others.  Without society’s research, men and women would essentially be the same and only differ in physical appearance. 

Dweck, C.S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. New York, NY: Little, Brown, and Company.

Williams, A. (2010, February 7). The new math on campus. New York Times. Retrieved February 15, 2011

Connections between Outliers and Mindset

When talking about Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and Mindset by Carol Dweck, it is truly a matter of perception as to whether the two books are more similar or more different.  Regardless of the comparisons and contrasts between the two, it is obvious that certain crystal clear connections can be drawn between the two books.  Both books relate to success and achieving it, however Gladwell and Dweck differ on how success is achieved.  While Gladwell insists that success is almost entirely dependent on opportunities and luck  (Gladwell 2008), Dweck argues that one has quite a bit of control over the amount of success one can achieve because all success relies on mindset (Dweck 2006).

            Perhaps the basis of the two authors’ disagreement and differences lies in their very definition of the word success.   Gladwell claims that success and how successful one is considered is largely dependent on society’s perception of success.  Dweck, on the other hand, likes to think that success is what you make it.  Even when it comes to the definition of success, both authors have such conflicting viewpoints.  The largest contrast between the two authors is the differing opinions of who has the power to determine the definition of success.  Who has control over the definition of success?

            As much as I would like to believe that I have complete control over what I consider success and how successful I become, I don’t think I can say with complete confidence that this is true.  I agree with Gladwell that success is largely dependent on opportunities that one is presented with in life.  That is not to say that I am in complete disagreement with Dweck.  In order to achieve success and remain successful, mindset and how one approaches a situation can have a great impact on the outcome and level of success.  Both authors claim to have some evidence to back their claims but it cannot be clear whether the information or studies are biased or not.  Therefore it makes it hard for me to be in complete agreement with either author.  I believe that there is some truth in what each author is saying, but not all of what they’re saying is necessarily true either.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: the story of success. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.

Dweck, C.S. (2006). Mindset: the new psychology of success. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

Gladwell on “Success is the disease of me”

            When people think of success, mostly positive connotations of the word come to mind.  However, Carol S. Dweck reveals how success can possess negative connotations as well.  Throughout her book Mindet, the Dweck stresses what a major impact a difference in mindset can make.  According to Dweck, success is almost entirely dependent on mindset.  There are two different mindsets: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset.  When specifically referring to success and the examples shared by Dweck in chapter seven of mindset, a person with a fixed mindset can let success get to their head and this in turn can lead to poor decisions in the future.  A person with a growth mindset however can take their failures and use them to better their performance. 

 In chapter seven of Outliers, Dweck mentions coach John Wooden of the highly successful UCLA basketball team.  Wooden thinks that one is normally “infected by success” and perceives success with both positive and negative connotations.  Similarly, “Pat Riley,former coach of the championship Los Angeles Lakers team, calls [success] the ‘disease of me’” (Dweck, p.210, 2008).  Malcolm Gladwell, author of  Outliers would probably agree with Pat Riley and the possibility that success can be both positive and negative, but would likely disagree that success is more dependent on mindset than on opportunities.  Gladwell would probably argue that without certain opportunities, hard work, determination, and mindset may not prove quite as effective.

Personally, I believe that all things that lead to success such as opportunities, hard work, determination, and mindset have to exist together.  No one aspect should be more important than another because true success cannot be achieved without all four working in harmony.

Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine Books.

Gladwell, Malcolm (2009)  Outliers : the story of success  Penguin Book, Camberwell, Vic.

Being a natural

                In Carol Dweck’s Mindset, chapter four focuses on the mindsets of those who play professional sports and the idea of people with “natural” talent.  According to Dweck, many people whom we, as a society, consider naturals became so talented more through hard work and determination than some innate ability that they never had to work for.  She mentions that the success of famous athletes such as Michael Jordan and Babe Ruth did not come from them being “naturals”.  In fact, both superstar athletes had rough times when they initially started playing their respective sports.  However she mentions that those who are actually naturals end up with fixed mindsets and fall short of success because they “don’t learn how to work hard or cope with setbacks” (Dweck 2008).

                But I’m not so sure that I think that true “naturals” exist to be perfectly honest.  But perhaps that is because I have nothing to relate to; something that I am truly a natural at.  No matter what one has as far as physical or intellectual endowment, they had to work to get it.  In high school, I used to be an above average math student.  But that doesn’t mean I was a natural at it.  My higher grades and placement into more advanced classes was a result of my parents pushing the subject of math at home when I was younger.  Besides breathing and maybe sleeping, I don’t believe I am a natural at anything.

                Perhaps I can’t truly respond to the label of a natural because I simply don’t believe such a thing exists.  But maybe that is because I don’t hear stories about true naturals because they have been consumed by their fixed mindsets and fallen short of success.  Or perhaps it is because it is hard to distinguish between who is actually a natural and who has simply put in a tremendous amount of work and perseverance to become better at something.  The reason is completely unclear.  But maybe one day, something or someone will come along and prove me wrong about the existence of naturals.
               

                Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine Books.

Their Choice

               Failure. What is failure?  Is failure something that can be learned from or is failure something that defines who we are and what we do.  In Carol S. Dweck’s book Mindset, the author evinces that the answer to this question truly lies within ourselves and what we think, i.e. our mindset.  Dweck, unlike Malcolm Gladwell (author of Outliers), believes that people themselves are in complete control of what they think and how they succeed or do not succeed.  According to Dweck, we are all born with a certain amount of talent or a set of skills and what we do throughout our lives can drastically impact what we become: for better or worse.

                There are two mindsets which a person can have: a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.  A person with a fixed mindset tends to take their failures and lets them define them and really bring them down on an emotional level.  However a person with a growth mindset utilizes their failures to better themselves in future endeavors.   In her book, Dweck mentions college students with a fixed mindset who refuse to look at the test scores of those who performed better on a given exam.  Instead they choose to look at the test scores of those who don’t perform as well.  However, college students with the growth mindsets were more concerned with those people who performed extraordinarily on the exam so that they could learn from their failures.   The students with fixed mindsets chose to look at test scores of those who didn’t perform as well because they needed to do what people with fixed mindets tend to do: “repair their self-esteem” (Dweck 36), rather than their failures.

                I do not want to think of myself as a college student with a fixed mindset, but the parallels that I was able to draw between myself and those Dweck mentions with fixed mindsets is astonishing.  I know that I would never want to see another student’s papers on something I performed poorly on.  It just makes me feel like more of a failure.  It leaves me thinking: “If he/she could have done so well, why couldn’t I”.  But perhaps this is something that I can work on.  Maybe I can stop being a college student who always needs self-assurance and become one who learns from failure.

Dweck, Carol S. Mindset. New York, New York: Ballantine Books, 2006.

What was Marita’s bargain?

                In chapter nine of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, the author shares a story about a young girl named Marita who traded her freedom and life as a kid for better education.  Gladwell shares that Marita grew up with her single mother who had very little money and the public schools of New York were lacking in structure and high test scores.  However, a school named KIPP was known for its high standards and better education; and when Marita was given the chance to attend, she seemed to have bargained her time as a kid for what she believed she needed more: a good education. 

This is a concept which is very difficult for me to grasp.  It seems amazing that a girl who is still in elementary school can make such a mature decision.  She could’ve just as easily said no when her mom asked her about it.  Once enrolled, Marita went to KIPP six days a week and her day lasted from 5:45 a.m to 11 p.m., including homework.  At the age of eighteen, it’s hard for me to imagine doing that, let alone when I was in elementary school.   But Marita knew that her key to success would be the better education that KIPP could provide for her. 

Marita essentially made a bargain with her school and in return KIPP gave her the same promise that it provided to its other students: “ to take kids who are stuck in poverty and give them  a chance to get out” (Gladwell 267).  But with all of this in mind, one may ask: what is more important to success, opportunity or hard work?  Gladwell may argue that without the luck of being drawn for attending KIPP, Marita would have no way of being successful.  However, without Marita’s long days at school and working on homework, she wouldn’t be successful either.  It is truly a matter of perception as which is more important, but perhaps that is exactly what Gladwell wants his audience to think about. 

Comparison of Harlan, KY to Proctorville, OH

When reading the beginning chapter six in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, in which he describes the basic environment of the small town of Harlan, an image of Proctorville,OH did cross my mind.  It was specifically the narrow roads and the characteristic of it being a “remote and strange place , unknown by the larger society around it” (Gladwell 162) which painted a picture of Proctorville in my mind.  However, when Gladwell goes on to mention the violence and family feuds in Harlan, KY, the similarities between my hometown and Harlan seemed to diminish.  Like Harlan, Proctorville has its share of families that most everyone knows about, but this is not due to a history of violence among them.  The only reason that certain families are well-known in Proctorville is because it is such a small place and certain families play a larger role in the community. Whether that role is positive or negative is different from family to family.

                That is not to say that occasional disputes don’t occur in a place like Proctorville.  I feel like that “code of honor” which Gladwell speaks of still exists in Proctorville, but definitely not to the same extreme.  I remember in high school that occasional physical altercations occurred between certain people simply from the exchange of a few harsh words.  Now whether these disputes are just the result of teenagers being immature or because of the “code of honor” is debatable.  But then there have been times when I have seen adults around Proctorville get into arguments in public places too.  But they are not teenagers.  Are they simply acting by the “code of honor” which may have been brought to the states by their ancestors or are they just as immature as their children? 

What is a successful student?

Just as it was mentioned with the definition of an outlier, the definition of a student who is successful is open to interpretation and depends mostly on society's view of the subject.  It is absolutely true that a student who works hard and earns A's and B's in school is a successful student.  Or is it? Did the student put in all of his effort?  Is the student happy with the outcome of the classes? Why is it that we think that earning a letter grade closer to an A makes a student more successful?  That's right.  It is simply because that is what we, as a society, have learned while growing up.  Those who earn better grades, earn better jobs, and sometimes even more money. To society, a successful student earns A's and then gets rewarded for those A's in the form of different privilages or more prestigious jobs.  Take the example of honor students at Marshall University.  Because the students earned higher grades in the past, they are rewarded with the opportunity to register for classes first. There's also the idea behind merit-based scholarships.  Because certain students were more "successful" than others in the past, they get to go to school for less money. Why can't a student who puts in all of his effort, all of his time, and manages to make it with straight C's and D's be considered a successful student?  This is because it is far too difficult and inconvenient to measure the amount of effort and hard work that one puts into schoolwork.  It is far easier to put a grade letter next to a student's name and judge their success based on that. 
There is no black and white when it comes to the true definition of a successful student.  The true definition of a successful student lies within that gray area, which we, as a society do not want to step in; for fear of finding something which we don't have the means to or are unable to understand.

What is an outlier?

According to dictionary.com, an outlier is "a person, thing, or part situated away from a main or related body".  The definition of an outlier is largely open to interpretation and can have both positive and negative connotations.  For example, upon hearing the word "outlier", I almost immediately have a flashback to the labs in my AP Biology course in high school.  After the completion of every lab excercise, everyone would record their results on the whiteboard.  From this information, our teacher would construct a graph on microsoft excel and display on the television screen.  And it almost never failed; our lab group would be the outliers.  If everyone recorded results between 1 and 2 cm, we could somehow manage to get a reading of 5 cm.  And then our teacher would go to great lengths to try to find the source of the error with us.  Sometimes, we just wouldn't continue with the course material until the error was found.  In this situation, being the outliers helped us eventually improve our techniques in the lab setting to minimize errors in the future.  As the end of the school year approached, our techniques in the lab improved to a point where were no longer the outliers.  In this situation, the word outlier has a negative connotation, which eventually leads to a positive outcome. 
In Outliers, Malcom Gladwell evinces to his audience the obvious benefits of being an outlier with the examples of people like Bill Joy, who is directly or indirectly responsible for many of the computer programs used today.  Gladwell also mentions the town of Roseta, in which the people are far healthier than the majority of America.  This goes to show that an outlier is simply a person, place, or thing that is unique or set apart from a main group.  The implications of the previous statement depend solely on how society interprets it.

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