Reading

Every week i try my best to read at least one book that will improve my business or self, and one book that will let my mind go to mush...:)
i find myself coming back again and again to a book i read last summer. It was written by Malcolm Gladwell, called "Outliers"
He also wrote another more well known book called 'the tipping point' which i have also read.
What brings me back to outliers is a portion in the book referencing schools in north america and schools in the orient. The comparison between the two was mind blowing. Basically, the children in the orient (Japan and Korea to be exact) spend a lot more time in school, studying and practising, then their North american counterparts do. And because of that, the stats show that the oriental schooling fairs way better than the North american version.
In the book, the author sampled a school in New York that was experimenting with the same attitudes and procedures that they do over there. A typical day in the school life of one of these children is starting school at 6:30 am (not taking in to consideration the travel time getting there) , they would go to school until around 6pm, be given on average 3 to 4 hours of homework per night. They would also do a half day on Saturdays. They would get two weeks off during the summer, and one week off at Christmas and that was it. Every child that attended this school placed in the 95th percentile for their age group when it came to marks. There was, as you can imagine, a huge waiting list to get into this school as every child that graduated, went on to schools like MIT, Harvard and other very prestigious schools. These are all loose quotes and stats, but the point i am trying to make is that maybe we need to take a look at how things are done in our culture. Our children take 9 weeks off during the summer (check in to the reason why they get this time off, the reason is outdated)two weeks at Christmas and another week for March Break. Many parents i have talked to want this break for their kids, so that they can 'be kids'. I am not saying i agree or disagree with this belief, i just want people to question why, just a little.
The thought behind the book was that it takes houndreds of thousands of hours to perfect something, as well as having the right chances and everything fall into place at the right time. Maybe we should be looking at how we can affect this situation for our children. We only want the best for them, right?
Read the book...its a neat read.

http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html

These are the rattlings in my head,
Dusty