Bummer Boy takes on Gladwell, Part 2

Jon Becker — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:08:28 +0000

In Part 1, I took a philosophical approach to my critique of Malcolm Gladwell and his book, Outliers. I promised a second part and I’ve really struggled writing it despite having some pretty strong feelings about the book. Not having the book in front of me (I returned it to the library…remember the library?) hasn’t helped, but I think it’s more a simple case of writer’s block. Thankfully, Justin stepped up and wrote a killer post that captured much of what I was thinking.

Thus, to get this stuff out of my system, I’m taking more of a rapid-fire, shotgun approach to this post. In no particular order…

Gladwell claims to have written THE story of success. But, does he ever define “success?” As best I can tell, he equates success with “earning lots of money.”

Or, maybe by success he means mastery. After all, this so-called 10,000+ hours to mastery rule seems to be the main takeaway from his book. Yet, if mastery/expertise only comes after 10,000+ hours of work, how does he have any credibility on anything he says or writes? Has he spent 10,000+ hours deeply researching “success?” Furthermore, who does he think he is speaking about learning at a conference of ~18,000 educators? Surely, he has been learning about learning for 10,000+ hours, right? He qualifies as an expert on learning, right?

Relatedly, the title…Outliers. In the statistical sense, an outlier is any data point from a sample that is very different than the mean of the sample (typically more than two standard deviations from the mean). It can be significantly higher OR LOWER than the mean. So, the first problem is that outliers are not necessarily “higher.” The second problem is that outliers are not necessarily “better” than the mean. In fact, in many instances, outliers are problematic; they exist on account of error and not because they are truly significantly different than the mean. Or, their existence is not due to error and a researcher must consider that the theory underlying the study is flawed. So, one could argue that Gladwell is attempting to re-think some theory on “success” by pointing to these outliers. However, that would mean that there is some theory of success that’s radically different than “hard work + opportunity = success.” I don’t think so.

Explaining his story of success by using Fleetwood Mac (as he did at NECC) as an example is ridiculous. Yes, there was a band named Fleetwood Mac that cranked out a whole bunch of albums and played a whole bunch of gigs before gaining (commercial) success. But, when Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined the band, everything changed. To suggest that the entity called Fleetwood Mac pre Nicks/Buckingham is the same as the entity called Fleetwood Mac post Nicks/Buckingham is absurd.

Finally, on education…Gladwell joins the growing list of folks pointing to the KIPP schools as evidence of what works in schooling. Have you seen the empirical evidence supporting KIPP’s effectiveness? Probably not, because so little of it exists. Here, Jeffrey Henig synthesizes the research on KIPP schools. A whopping seven whole studies show a small positive achievement effect for KIPP students, but there’s lots of student attrition and huge demands on KIPP educators. Do you think Gladwell has ever been in a KIPP school? Do you think he would send his kids to a KIPP school?

Finally, Let me make clear that I’m not anti-Gladwell. I think he’s a fine storyteller…in short form. He’s also an engaging speaker. When he ventures into book-length work, I think he really struggles.

That’s it; I’m glad I finally got that done. On to more important things…

Bummer Boy takes on Gladwell, Part 1

Jon Becker — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:15:31 +0000

Since Will Richardson dubbed me IWB Bummer Boy, and my one blog post (so far) about Edubloggercon ’09 came off as cranky, I figured I’d stay in role and finally churn out my long promised take on Malcolm Gladwell and specifically his newest book, Outliers.

I’ve had some quick back-and-forth with some folks on Twitter about Outliers, and the main theme of those arguing against me has been that I shouldn’t take Outliers as any serious work of social science. I should understand Gladwell’s work as a collection of loosely-tied, interesting stories. To that, I say “HOGWASH!”

The New York Times refers to Outliers as “The Sociology of Success.” Gladwell himself subtitles the book “THE [emphasis added] Story of Success.” In other words, Gladwell suggests quite explicitly that he is proposing a theory to explain success. I simply do not know how to understand the book as anything other than a serious effort to develop an explanatory model. That, to me, is a social scientific effort.

My contention, then, is that Gladwell’s work is the result of (weak) inductive thinking/reasoning. In other words, Gladwell is attempting to ascribe “properties or relations to types based on an observation instance (i.e., on a number of observations or experiences)…” (Wikipedia). Or, as is quoted in Wikipedia, Gladwell attempts to take us “”beyond the confines of our current evidence or knowledge to conclusions about the unknown.” That process is depicted in the following figure.

SOURCE: Trochim, 2006

I won’t write a treatise on inductive reasoning, but I encourage you to read the Wikipedia article. It’s quite well-written, IMHO. If you’re into philosophy, I’d also encouarage you to read David Hume’s text on the problem of induction, which is referenced in the Wikipedia article.

My problem here is that Gladwell relies on incredibly weak induction. Over and over, he uses a single case as a premise for his ultimate conclusion. For example, he uses the case of Christopher Langan to make the point that genius alone does not lead to success. Langan is a guy with an IQ of 165 who works on a horse farm in Missouri. He has a higher IQ than Einstein, yet he works on a horse farm. Gladwell’s logic, then, is that since Langan did not become highly successful, it must be that IQ is not enough. In other words, here’s the logic:

Langan has a really high IQ
Langan was never in an environment that provided an opportunity to capitalize on his IQ
Langan did not become successful
Therefore, nobody with a high IQ can succeed without the right environmental circumstances.

As Lev Grossman of Time magazine wrote, “Gladwell’s weapon of choice when assaulting myths is the anecdote.” I would add that Gladwell’s weapon of choice when reaching all of his conclusions is the anecdote. In other words, if he can find one case that fits his thinking, he readily draws a conclusion by generalizing from that one case. Over and over again, he states a conclusion and backs it up by telling a story.

There is a place for inductive thinking in the social sciences. In fact, as Trochim points out, social science research often involves a cyclical process involving both deductive and inductive thinking. But, some inductions are stronger than others. For example, if you observe something very frequently, you might reach a conclusion that is reasonably probabilistic. That is a strong induction.

A real example: Imagine if Martians had come to Earth for the first time and landed at Edubloggercon ’09. They would have observed nearly 100 edubloggers, all of whom were light skinned. From that premise, they could have concluded that all edubloggers are light skinned. THAT would have been a strong induction.

[TOMORROW: Part 2, where the fun stuff happens]

Educational Insanity » critique

Bummer Boy takes on Gladwell, Part 2

Bummer Boy takes on Gladwell, Part 1