Book Clubbing: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Why do Asian societies excel in the maths and sciences? Students from Singapore, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan beat all other nations in the TIMSS (a comprehensive math and science test give to elementary and junior high students from around the world). Malcolm Gladwell ‘s Outliers credits the cultural heritage of wet-rice agriculture. In these countries, poor peasants have cultivated rice paddies for thousand of centuries, working each year at least three thousand hours per small paddy. It is actually very skilled labor, requiring planning, dedication, ceaseless work – just the qualities valuable for academics!

A favorite maxim of these peasant farmers is: “No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.” It is all about attitude - and this attitude of hard work and persistence, translates well into academic work. It is not just our stars that make us so, it is our culture, our heritage, the society that we grow up in.

Another chapter in Outliers takes a look at Marita, a young poor girl from the South Bronx attending an experimental public school, the KIPP Academy. To become a successful student at KIPP, 12 year old Marita must shed those parts of her culture that bind her to poverty. Now she arises at 5:45 am to get ready for school, spends a long day at KIPP, typically leaves for home at 5 pm, eats a quick dinner, and hits the books -- studying and homework. KIPP students typically attend school for longer days and more days than regular public schools – going for an extra three weeks in July.

Students like Marita need a chance, and that chance, says Gladwell, is that “Someone bought a little bit of the rice paddy to the South Bronx and explained to her the miracle of meaningful work.”

Outliers is interested in how cultural heritage interacts with the individual to determine and influence our behavior and choices. Each chapter examines a different aspect – but it is noteworthy, that at least three of the nine cases discussed, involve formal education.

And education is in definitely in the news today – from debates about charter schools, voucher systems, for profit universities, how to teach and what to teach, testing, standards, and more. These are intense and deeply contentious discussions. Teacher unions are being pressured to give up tenure and to tie pay to student performance. The No Child Left Behind Act has pushed Federal government into the public school system in new ways.

Read about efforts to improve educational outcomes for the urban poor and the poorly educated. But remember, every solution and approach has its advocates and opponents.

First, there is a no-holds-barred indictment of the current public school system in Waiting for "Superman": how we can save America's failing public schools. A collection of essays that sees the public school system tottering on the brink of disaster, graduating millions of children ill prepared for the 21^st century job market. A passionate plea for change – with input from prominent voices in the education debate: Bill and Melinda Gates, Michelle Rhee, Geoffrey Canada, and others.

The bee eater: Michelle Rhee takes on the nation's worst school district by Richard Whitmire profiles Michelle Rhee the controversial – and now former – chancellor of the Washington DC public school system from 2007 to 2010. Ms Rhee took on the status quo in the District of Columbia – but in the process alienated powerful constituencies and was ousted. Why bee eater? As a young teacher in Baltimore, Rhee famously got the full attention of her class one day when she swatted down a bee flying about the classroom and then swallowed it!

Whatever it takes: Geoffrey Canada's quest to change Harlem and America by Paul Tough is a thoroughly readable and engrossing look at the inspiring, no-holds barred quest of community activist and educator Geoffrey Canada, to radically impact the lives of Harlem’s most at-risk children. Canada has created a 97 block Children’s’ Zone in Harlem.

With a network of programs and special schools the Zone wields a sword of education and early intervention programs to break the cycle of poverty.

In The shame of the nation: the restoration of apartheid schooling in America, Jonathan Kozol , after surveying firsthand 60 schools in 11 states, finds a form of racial apartheid in public schools which he calls the shameful resegregation of schools and “a national horror hidden in plain sight “. These schools are underequipped and the percentage of schools with low-income African Americans and Hispanic students is between 80 and 99%. Interesting, Kozol lays much of the blame on the Federal law No Child Left Behind which forces poor school districts to divert resources to efforts that mainly prepare students for mandated annual standardized tests.

The flat world and education: how America's commitment to equity will determine our future by Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education, uses vast amounts of social research to pinpoint exactly what our education problems are and to propose appropriate solutions. She looks at the excellent and equitable school system of Finland, Singapore and South Korea and finds that their success is based on fair and consistent government funding of the schools and well trained and well paid teachers. But in America, fair, consistent and adequate school funding across the nation is lacking. Combine this with our high child poverty rate – and you have the educational crisis. Testing, school privatization, vouchers, charters – these are not the real solutions.

- Karen S.

Photo of Longki Terrace courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LongjiTerraces.jpg