I feel honored to note that two of Malcolm Gladwell’s big anecdotes in his new book were covered first in my newspaper column!

— Gladwell: “For American students from wealthy homes, summer vacation isn’t a problem; but, citing the research of a Johns Hopkins sociologist, Gladwell shows that it’s a profound handicap for students from poor homes, who actually outlearn their rich counterparts during the school year but then fall behind them when school lets out. ‘For its poorest students, America doesn’t have a school problem,’ Gladwell concludes. ‘It has a summer-vacation problem.’”

— Benton, July 2003: “Two years ago, researchers at Johns Hopkins University published a fascinating study…They found that schools were actually doing a pretty good job of helping poor kids keep up. From September to May, poor first-graders in the study learned enough to boost their scores 106 points. The scores of middle-class and wealthy kids went up 106 points, too — dead even. But when they tested the same kids again at the end of summer vacation, the better-off kids had gained another 24 points while away from school. Poor kids had dropped 9 points. The researchers kept following the kids and found the same gap yawning open every summer. Over five summers, the well-off kids gained a total of 72 points while on break. The poor kids lost a total of 7 points - which means they entered sixth grade almost a year behind, purely because of what happened during the summer. ‘Summer’s a big reason for the existence of that gap,’ Mr. Fairchild said.”

— Gladwell: “Because Canada’s eligibility cutoff for junior hockey is January 1, Gladwell writes, ‘a boy who turns 10 on January 2, then, could be playing alongside someone who doesn’t turn 10 until the end of the year.’ You can guess at that age, when the differences in physical maturity are so great, which one of those kids is going to make the league all-star team. Once on that all-star team, the January 2 kid starts practicing more, getting better coaching, and playing against tougher competition—so much so that by the time he’s, say, 14, he’s not just older than the kid with the December 30 birthday, he’s better.”

— Benton, August 2007 (my last column!): “For instance, 10 years ago, the international body that governs soccer decided to change the way it breaks children into age groups for select team competitions. Instead of letting kids move from age group to age group as their birthdays passed, it decided to set a uniform date that would be the cutoff point for everyone. That date was Jan. 1. From that point on, kids with birthdays early in the year would always be the oldest, and kids born in November and December would always be the youngest. As a result, the U.S. national soccer team for boys 15 and younger skews the way you’d imagine. The team has 24 members, and 17 of them have birthdays in January, February or March. Again, does just a few months of age difference mean that much in the physical abilities of a teenager? Maybe. But the bigger differences are when these kids are younger — when they’re playing their first soccer as 5- and 6-year-olds. Older kids, whose physical skills have developed a bit more, get singled out for the most praise. They get access to the best coaching. Their parents become convinced they have the most innate talent.”

And then we both draw analogies from our sport-of-choice to the public schools.

I should go on parallel-universe book tour.

12 November 2008

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