Monday 24 February 2014

Malcolm Gladwell's David & Goliath


David and Goliath Underdogs, Misfits, and The Art of Battling Giants

by Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell states in the Introduction that David and Goliath is "about what happens when ordinary people confront giants."  By giants, he means "powerful opponents of all kinds".  By sharing a variety of profiles of remarkable individuals, he explores two ideas:

           1. Much of what people consider valuable results from lopsided conflicts, because the act of                  confronting overwhelming odds produces "greatness and beauty"


           2. We often get these types of conflicts wrong, because giants' apparent strengths often are                   sources of their greatest weakness, and because being the underdog can change people 

               as being the underdog creates opportunities for them and educates them.



In the remainder of the Introduction, Gladwell shows that the story of David and Goliath has come to represent the archetype "improbable victory" tale only because we have failed to understand the events and characters of this story.  We have come to see this battle as a mismatch with an unlikely outcome because we only view "power in terms of physical might". However, a careful consideration of the conflict would reveal the advantages that David had going for himself: nimble swiftness over lumbering strength, and adept projectile hurling over up-close fighting, and eagle-like vision over blurred vision.


In Part One, Gladwell shares several stories to show the consequences of the error we make in reading David and Goliath - of having a too "rigid and definition of what advantage is." He also uses the stories to reveal "what it takes" to be the sort of person who doesn't, like David, "accept the conventional order of things as a given."



In this vein, he tells the stories of Lawrence of Arabia and Vivek Ranadive.  The former used his knowledge of the desert and surprise attack to help a rag-tag Bedouin tribe to defeat the much mightier Turkish army, while the latter used a game-long full court press strategy to coach a small and untalented girls basketball team to stunning victories over much taller and skilled opponents.


In a great chapter on what he terms the "Inverted U effect", Gladwell shows that an advantage can ironically become a disadvantage.  The Inverted U operates as follows: on the left side, "doing more or having more makes things better"; however, then you hit a "flat middle, where doing more doesn't make much of a difference".  Finally, you arrive at the right side, where doing or having more makes things worse.  

The two examples he gives of the inverted U are wealth and raising children, and class size. In the case of the latter, he presents evidence and testimony that very small classes are just as

dysfunctional as very large classes.  He concludes, "The inverted U curve reminds us that there is a point at which money and resources stop making our lives better and start making them worse." (68)

Gladwell also devotes a chapter to another example of where bigger and seemingly better doesn't always work to people's advantage.  This example has to do with the relative advantages of attending a modest university or college as opposed to attending a prestigious one. Here, Gladwell argues that something called relative deprivation creates a Big Fish-Little Pond Effect (80) at mediocre colleges that gives middling students a decided advantage over students in Harvard-type colleges where even very talented students compare themselves to brilliant top-achieving students, find themselves wanting, and become discouraged.  "The big pond takes really bright students and demoralizes them." (90)
The Inverted U Effect
In Part 2 of David and Goliath, Gladwell investigates the notion that disadvantages can sometimes prove to be assets. He terms such phenomenon "desirable difficulties". (102). He uses several profiles of people to demonstrate that hardships can drive some people to become smarter, stronger, or operate with more abandon and a greater sense of freedom.


He shares the remarkable story of David Boies as an example of the powerful compensation learning that can result from a disadvantage. Boies, despite suffering from dyslexia, became a highly successful trial lawyer.  His inability to read effectively drove him out of necessity to, instead, acquire knowledge through effective listening thus resulting in his becoming a skillful listener able to probe the testimony of people in court.


David Boies

Emil 'Jay' Freireich, whom Gladwell presents as an example of strength-from-difficulty, had an abysmal childhood - he lost his father at a very young age and was virtually abandoned by his mother as a boy.  Despite these hardships - in fact, because of them, he developed the fortitude and perseverance to become a hematologist who developed breakthrough treatments for childhood leukaemia.  Like Londoners who developed courage from the experience of remote misses during the Nazi bombings of that city, Freieich's hardships built him up rather than knocked him down.


Then there is Wyatt Walker of the American Civil Rights Movement, who despite being a part of the "underdog" oppressed black minority in the southern states, used a no-holes-barred trickster-like approach to goad the bigoted white establishment of the south into behaving in such a reprehensible way that it gained support for the Movement.



In the third and last part of the book, Gladwell looks at the limitations of power. He makes the point that power only has its intended effect when it is legitimate.  Legitimacy only exists when authority is predictable and fair and the people asked to obey it have a voice in it.



He shares the story of Rosemary Lawlor, an Irish Catholic wife and young mother who lived in Belfast during the clash between the British Protestant establishment and the Irish Catholic minority in Northern Ireland.  Her joining the protest along with thousands of others, despite the vastly superior and resolute British army, shows "that when law is applied in the absence of legitimacy", it produces opposition, not obedience.

Lastly, Gladwell compares the response of two parents to the murder of their child.  The first, Mike Reynolds, responded to the murder of his daughter in California with an understandable cry for retribution through a crusade to institute a get-tough-on criminals policy called Three Strikes whereby a mandatory 25-year sentence was imposed on anyone who committed the same crime 3 times. The other, Manitoban Wilma Derkson, chose to forgive.  Gladwell argues that while the latter David-like approach had lasting impact, the former Goliath-like expression of power ultimately failed because it lacked legitimacy. Although crime rates in California were lowered for a period of time
following the inception of Three Strikes, instances of violent crime increased in some areas of the state.

Sunday 9 February 2014

On Reading


Reading Strategies That Work


As a superintendent responsible for over a dozen schools (both elementary and secondary), and a former language arts teacher, I keep coming back to the primacy of reading in student success.   Now more than ever, with young people flocking to the internet and the powerful Google search engine, it is imperative for young people to develop not only strong reading comprehension skills but as well a lifelong interest in reading.


There is a growing body of research that points to the benefits of reading - both in terms of improving student achievement and helping make young people more caring and responsible people:

Resources such as Think Literacy, provide teachers with great pre-reading, reading, and post-reading strategies.  Some of my personal favourites are as follows:

1. Anticipation Guide
    An Anticipation Guide is a series of questions or statements related to the topic or point of view of      a  particular text.  Students work silently to read and then agree or disagree with each statement.          The purpose of the guide is to activate the student's prior knowledge on the subject of the text and      whet his appetite for reading it.

Here's a sample anticipation guide I created recently for Larry Dressler's Standing in The Fire, which was a book I led discussions with Ontario Catholic supervisory officers participating in a mentoring program:  


2. Skimming
    Skimming involves looking only for the main ideas in texts.  For example, concentrate only on the      topic sentences of paragraphs.  In terms of the overall text, focus on the introductory and         
    concluding paragraphs.  In the information age, in which we are bombarded with text through the        internet everyday, skimming is as much a life skill as it is a reading skill!

  Skimming



3. U.S.S. R. 
    Uninterrupted Silent Sustained Reading is a bread & butter strategy for helping young people 
    discover reading flow - the joy of reading, and develop a lifelong love of reading.  Critics argue
    that unfocused silent reading during class time is unproductive, but they couldn't be more wrong,
    as several studies have shown: 


    Of course, for USSR to be successful, teachers must put away their marking and other distractors and 
    read silently along with their students! 

4. Word Walls
   The creation of bright and attractive bulletin boards with key and difficult vocabulary from a text
    being studied (or electronic versions of the same) is an important strategy in helping students
    comprehend the text they are reading.  Word walls should be created for in all subjects as an
    essential part of reading in the content area. 

Science Word Wall

  
READICIDE

by Kelly Gallagher


Kelly Gallagher’s thesis in Readicide is stated in the Introduction:   “Rather than helping students, many of the reading practices found in today’s classrooms are {ironically} actually contributing to the death of reading.

In Chapter 1, The Elephant in The Room, Gallagher argues that an overemphasis on standardized testing “is playing a major part in killing off readers” in schools. (7)  First, an obsession with “shallow” test preparation, maintains Gallagher, sabotages the development of reading comprehension skills in that it is encouraging equally “shallow teaching and learning”.   (9)  Since teachers feel compelled to teach to the tests, they “sprint” through a wide-range of reading tasks and standards, sacrificing “deep, rich teaching and learning” and the opportunity for students to develop the critical literacy skills that they need to become fully functioning citizens.  As well, since teachers abandon stimulating approaches to literature in their efforts to teach to the test, reading “becomes another worksheet activity” killing off student motivation to read.  Students conclude that the primary purpose for reading is to pass tests, “ensuring any chance they may have had of developing a lifelong reading habit is lost.”(17) 
Gallagher argues that the biggest losers from the overemphasis on testing are those students in the greatest need of help - struggling readers.  They are particularly vulnerable because when they fail to succeed on standardized reading tests, they are condemned to a remediation program that involves more of the same “shallow, mind-numbing” instruction that is both ineffective in helping them develop meaningful literacy skills and further erodes their interest in reading.  Hence, standardized testing is widening the reading achievement gap between students!

Along with the preoccupation with high-stakes tests, Gallagher also maintains that a not unrelated lack of authentic reading experiences in schools is contributing to readicide. He argues that it is particularly important for young people to be exposed to rich reading opportunities in school since many enter school suffering from “word poverty” (limited vocabularies) from linguistically impoverished homes.  At school, students need to be immersed in a “book flood” – have access to a wide range of interesting reading materials. (32)


Gallagher emphasizes that rich reading experiences, including the reading of novels and sustained silent reading time in classrooms  - are needed in schools not only so that students can develop rudimentary reading comprehension skills (ie. decoding) but also so that they acquire the necessary background knowledge in a number of areas (ie. history, civics, etc.) required to become fully functioning citizens.  This essential knowledge is best required through access to newspapers, blogs, and magazines.  

Gallagher emphasizes that rich reading opportunities such as novel reading and silent sustained reading not only help children develop a lifelong interest in reading but as well actually improves student achievement in literacy.  He cites several studies to support his contention.

Important advice shared by Gallagher for conducting a successful reading program in classrooms includes tips such as:

-       augmenting novels and other academic reading with contemporary or “real-world” texts;
-       having teachers read silently during sustained silent reading;
-       bringing libraries into classrooms through book floods rather than bring students to libraries;
-       combating summer reading loss by encouraging leisure reading programs.

Author Kelly Gallagher
           The third contributor to readicide is intensive over-analysis of literature and nonfiction.  Chopping up the study of books, by frequent teacher analysis, kills reading flow for children, preventing them from experiencing a intimate and deep connection to the book they are reading.  Gallagher uses a great analogy to illustrate this point: Would anyone want to attend a gripping movie only to have the viewing of it interrupted several times by someone explaining what it’s all about and assigning worksheet questions based on it?  The over-analysis of aspects of literature such as themes, symbolism, and characterization create “a tsunami that drowns adolescent readers” (64) and damages their chances of developing a lifelong interest in reading.  Gallager’s Kill-a-Reader Casserole recipe on page 73 is both humorous and ominous. 

            Over-analysis of literature also “creates instruction that values the trivial at the expense of the meaningful” (66)   The dangerous practice, according to Gallagher, is that students are being asked to approach the reading of books from the standpoint of test preparation and are missing out on the important opportunity to approach books as vicarious life lessons – what he describes as “imaginative rehearsals” (70) for life.

           The under-teaching of books contributes to readicide just as much as the over-teaching of them.   Although students should be allowed to read high-interest books without too much teacher direction, they require support when reading academic texts such as classic literature.   For the latter, teachers should find the “sweet spot” between   teacher direction and student independent reading.

           Teachers should approach difficult texts with a guided tour of the more complex elements. They should provide “framing” for such texts, which involves pre-reading activities such as a discussion of the historical context for a story along with background on the author, a preview of difficult but important vocabulary, and an anticipation guide.    They should then allow big chunk uninterrupted first draft reading followed by second and third draft teacher-directed small chunk reading and analysis of key parts of the story.

Readicide is an important book for all teachers of literature and nonfiction as it provides both a warning against destroying the love of reading among students (through over-teaching and obsession with test preparation) and a guide to finding the sweet spot in reading instruction.

To hear Kelly Gallagher speak about Readicide, click the links below: