Outliers: The Story of Success

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this book; I selected it in large part because I had read and enjoyed both Tipping Point and Blink, finding Gladwell both a thought provoking and entertaining writer.

In a conversation with Malcolm Gladwell, the author notes that our understanding of success is "crude" and, in his view, too focused on the individual alone and less on the culture, community, family and generation: "We've been looking at tall trees, and I think we should have been looking at the forest."

Gladwell goes inside of this idea in the first chapter, looking at elite athletes in the Canadian hockey system.  He discovered that a large majority of professional players are born in the three months following the junior league cutoff.  He notes that these kids have the benefit of size and maturity early on, and thus are more likely to go to the "A" leagues based on performance, where they receive better coaching and more opportunity.  Not necessarily because they are the most innately talented, but because their early size and maturity advantage stays with them. 

The same effect exists in school performance; members of the oldest cohort are overrepresented and the youngest are underrepresented in college. 

Is it appropriate to sort children by ability early in their academic careers, i.e., elementary school, when we know that doing so permanently disadvantages a large number of students? 

Highly unscientific, but out of curiosity, how many of you, fellow graduate students (and professor), were among the oldest quartile of your high school graduating class?  If you're willing to share the cutoff date for your school and the month of your birth, I'll compile the information and share in a later post.