Today on NRO, Thomas Sowell reviews Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. As the subtitle states, the book is “The story of success.” Sowell writes that: “The theme running through this book is that spectacular individual achievements — outliers — are not simply a matter of personal merit but come out of a background of special circumstances that enable outstanding individual ability to lead to performances far beyond the norm.”
Sowell also makes this comment:
One of the most inspiring chapters in Outliers is about a KIPP charter school serving minority students, whose academic performances far exceed those of other minority students, even though these students were selected by lottery, rather than on the basis of ability.
A lot could be done to support and expand such schools. . . .
But there is more happening — something very hopeful, and likely to already be nudging new outliers This time minority kids are not at a disadvantage.
My guess (passion) is that having the internet in a pocket is a brain power boost that is creating the the next decade’s smartest twenty-somethings. By the decade after that, hand-held knowledge input will have made significant knowledge acquisition no longer outlierish.
Usually still, schools discourage the independence that knowledge-in-my-pocket gives kids. A lot could be done to get schools to recognize and encourage the new knowledge tool. The serendipity for minority students in using the internet on their individual mobile devices is that the machines are incapable of prejudice. When you use the internet on your mobile, the little machine has no idea what color you are or who is your daddy.
