Activities
Days
Percentage
Ploughing and sowing
12
5.8
Cereal harvest
28
13.6
Haymaking and carting
24
11.7
Threshing
130
63.1
Other work
12
5.8
Total
206
100.0
The fatalism of Russian peasant proverbs is contrasted with the self-reliance
of Chinese ones by R. David Arkush in “
If Man Works Hard the Land Will
Not Be Lazy
—Entrepreneurial Values in North Chinese Peasant Proverbs,”
Modern China
10, no. 4 (October 1984): 461–479.
The correlation between students’ national average scores in TIMSS and their
persistence in answering the student survey attached to the test has been
evaluated in “Predictors of National Differences in Mathematics and Science
Achievement of Eighth Grade Students: Data from TIMSS for the Six-Nation
Educational Research Program,” by Erling E. Boe, Henry May, Gema
Barkanic, and Robert F. Boruch at the Center for Research and Evaluation in
Social Policy, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. It
was revised February 28, 2002. The graph showing the results can be seen on
page 9.
Results of the TIMSS tests throughout the years can be found on the National
Center for Education Statistics Web site,
http://nces.ed.gov/timss/
.
Priscilla Blinco’s study is entitled “Task Persistence in Japanese Elementary
Schools” and can be found in Edward Beauchamp, ed.,
Windows on Japanese
Education
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1991).
NINE: MARITA’S BARGAIN
An article in the
New York Times Magazine
by Paul Tough, “What It Takes
to Make a Student” (November 26, 2006), examines the impact of the
government’s No Child Left Behind policy, the reasons for the education gap,
and the impact of charter schools such as KIPP.
Kenneth M. Gold,
School’s In: The History of Summer Education in
American Public Schools
(New York: Peter Lang, 2002), is an unexpectedly
fascinating account of the roots of the American school year.
Karl L. Alexander, Doris R. Entwisle, and Linda S. Olson’s study on the
impact of summer vacation is called “Schools, Achievement, and Inequality:
A Seasonal Perspective,” published in
Education Evaluation and Policy
Analysis
23, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 171–191.
Much of the cross-national data comes from Michael J. Barrett’s “The Case
for More School Days,” published in the
Atlantic Monthly
in November
1990, p. 78.
EPILOGUE: A JAMAICAN STORY
William M. MacMillan details how his fears came to pass in the preface to
the second edition of
Warning from the West Indies: A Tract for Africa and
the Empire
(U.K.: Penguin Books, 1938).
The sexual exploits and horrific punishments of Jamaica’s white ruling class
are detailed by Trevor Burnard in
Mastery, Tyranny and Desire: Thomas
Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World
(Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
The intermediary color class in the West Indies, not seen in the American
South, is described by Donald L. Horowitz in “Color Differentiation in the
American Systems of Slavery,”
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
3, no.3
(Winter 1973): 509–541.
Population and employment statistics among the different-colored classes in
1950s Jamaica are taken from Leonard Broom’s essay “The Social
Differentiation of Jamaica,”
American Sociological Review
19, no. 2 (April
1954): 115–125.
Divisions of color within families are explored by Fernando Henriques in
“Colour Values in Jamaican Society,”
British Journal of Sociology
2, no. 2
(June 1951): 115–121.
Joyce Gladwell’s experiences as a black woman in the UK are from
Brown
Face, Big Master
(London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1969). It is a wonderful book.
I recommend it highly—although, as you can imagine, I could be a bit biased.
Acknowledgments
I’m happy to say that
Outliers
conforms to its own thesis. It was very much a
collective effort. I was inspired, as I seem to always be, by the work of
Richard Nisbett. It was reading the
Culture of Honor
that set in motion a lot
of the thinking that led to this book. Thank you, Professor Nisbett.
As always, I prevailed upon my friends to critique various drafts of the
manuscript. Happily, they complied, and
Outliers
is infinitely better as a
result. Many thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Terry Martin, Robert McCrum, Sarah
Lyall, Charles Randolph, Tali Farhadian, Zoe Rosenfeld, and Bruce Headlam.
Stacey Kalish and Sarah Kessler did yeoman’s work in research and fact-
checking. Suzy Hansen performed her usual editorial magic. David Remnick
graciously gave me time off from my duties at
The New Yorker
to complete
this book. Thank you, as always, David. Henry Finder, my editor at
The New
Yorker,
saved me from myself and reminded me how to think, as he always
does. I have worked with Henry for so long that I now have what I like to call
the “internal Finder,” which is a self-correcting voice inside my head that
gives me the benefit of Henry’s wisdom even when he is not there. Both
Finders—internal and external—were invaluable.
Bill Phillips and I have been two for two so far, and I’m very grateful I
was able to enlist his Midas touch once more. Thank you, Bill. Here’s hoping
we go three for three. Will Goodlad and Stefan McGrath at Penguin in
England, and Michael Pietsch and—especially—Geoff Shandler at Little,
Brown saw this manuscript through, from start to finish. Thanks to the rest of
the team at Little, Brown as well: Heather Fain and Heather Rizzo and Junie
Dahn. My fellow Canadian Pamela Marshall is a word wizard. I cannot
imagine publishing a book without her.
Two final words of appreciation. Tina Bennett, my agent, has been with
me from the very beginning. She is insightful and thoughtful and encouraging
and unfailingly wise, and when I think of what she has done for me, I feel as
lucky as a hockey player born on January 1.
I owe thanks most of all, though, to my parents, Graham and Joyce. This
is a book about the meaning of work, and I learned that work can be
meaningful from my father. Everything he does—from his most complex
academic mathematics to digging in the garden—he tackles with joy and
resolve and enthusiasm. My earliest memories of my father are of seeing him
work at his desk and realizing that he was happy. I did not know it then, but
that was one of the most precious gifts a father can give his child. My mother,
for her part, taught me how to express myself; she taught me that there is
beauty in saying something clearly and simply. She read every word of this
book and tried to hold me to that standard. My grandmother Daisy, to whom
Outliers
is dedicated, gave my mother the gift of opportunity. My mother has
done the same for me.
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