Outliers Questions #4 [Pg. 224-286]

1. What advantage do Mandarin speakers have over English speakers with respect to articulating numbers?

2. What contrast in lifestyle does Gladwell draw between agrarian life in Europe and that in China?

3. Why would the proverb "No one who can rise beore dwn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich" be unthinkable for someone outside of the practice of cultivating rice?

4. What does Alan Schoenfeld feel is the key to being good at mathematics?

5. What is the difference between how long on average an American child will work on a math puzzle compared to a Japanese child?

6. What does the KIPP acronym SSLANT stand for?

7. Why were early school reformers in the 1800s in the U.S. concerned that schoolchildren not get too much schooling?

8. How do agricultural patterns imprint themselves on education in Asia versus the U.S.?

9. Why does Gladwell take issue with the notion that schools are failing all, but particularly low income, kids?

10. Why is the retention of math knowledge higher at KIPP, according to Frank Corcoran?

11. What did William MacMillan foretell in his book Warning from the West Indies?

12. To whom does Gladwell say his mother is beholden for her education?

13. Why did "coloreds" get more opportunities in Jamaica than in the U. S.?

14. Why did Gladwell's mother acknowledge that it was not appropriate for her to be angry at a London landlady?

15. What is Gladwell's relation to Colin Powell?