Alright, so people succeed because they're gifted, they work hard, they practise. Anyone can do it if they want to. Well, according to Gladwell in his latest book, this simply is not so. And he's got statistics to prove it.
Gladwell uses Canadian examples, for a refreshing change. Maybe it's because Gladwell himself graduated from the University of Toronto? He cleverly lulls us into thinking that successful hockey players are more talented, have practised more... Not so.
"People don't rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage... It's not enough to ask what successful people are like. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't."
What he reveals is that most successful hockey players are born in January, February and March. It has nothing to do with astrology.
"It's simply that in Canada, the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey is January 1. A boy who turns ten on January 2, then, could be playing alongside someone who doesn't turn ten until the end of the year -- and at that age, in preadolescence, a twelve-month gap in age represents an enormous difference in physical maturity."
Kind of surprising? Surprising because we're led to believe otherwise. It's talent, practice, being gifted, more motivated. Not so.
"In the beginning, (a young hockey player's) advantage isn't so much that he is inherently better, but only that he is a little older. By the age of thirteen or fourteen, with the benefit of better coaching and all that extra practice under his belt, he really is better, so he's the one more likely to make it to the Major Junior A league, and from there into the big leagues."
As it turns out then, by picking the boys who appear to be "the best" every year means that coaches are merely picking the eldest - those born in January, February and March.
Gladwell continues:
"Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And, most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play --- and by "we" I mean society --- in determining who makes it and who doesn't.
It we chose to, we could acknowledge that cutoff dates matter. We could set up two or even three hockey leagues, divided up by month of birth...
Schools could do the same thing. Elementary and middle schools could put the January through April-born students in one class, the May through August in another class, and those born in September through December in the third class. They could let students learn with and compete against other students of the same maturity level. It would be a little more complicated administratively... but it would level the playing field for those who --- through no fault of their own --- have been dealt a big disadvantage by the educational system. We could easily take control of the machinery of achievement --- not just in sports... but in other more consequential areas as well. But we don't. And why? Because we cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all."
New ideas to break down old barriers - so interesting.
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