Jeff Lail

One of my favorite parts of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” is his discussion of how the setup of the school schedule unfairly disadvantages kids for no fault of their own.  I’m going to attempt to paraphrase his argument.

So, let’s say you have rich kid and poor kid…

During the school year, rich kid and poor kid make fairly comparable gains in their education.  So, let’s say that during Kindergarten, a kid gains 10 pts in their education, and every year after the kid gains 10 pts in their education.  The majority of American school systems are set up, though, where kids get 2-3 months off during the summer.  Now, during the summer, most poor kids are not afforded the same opportunities that rich kids have.  Rich kids do summer enrichment programs at the science center and go to summer camps; poor kids go and play with other kids in the neighborhood, play video games, and watch TV (obviously, this is a mass generalization for the sake of illustration).  So, over the summer, the rich kids may gain another 2-3 points on their education but the poor kids make little or no gains.  Let me chart this so you can see the effect.

As you can see, by 4th grade, the small difference of one summer has grown to a chasm between the educational opportunities provided to the rich kid and the poor kid.

The irony is that our culture often harps about how educational opportunities provided to rich kids and poor kids are all about money provided to the schools (what an american thing to say), but this is not what Gladwell found.  While providing equal funds to the rich and poor schools is certainly an issue, it’s the system that allows poor kids to spend months not getting the education that a rich kid does that exacerbate differences in educational opportunity between the rich and the poor.  How is this fair?

Many schools have gone to year-round schools and this is certainly a solution.  Regardless though, it’s absurd (and I would argue unjust) to allow students to slip through the cracks because we have an antiquated system of summer vacation that existed so kids could help with the summer field work 100 years ago.

On a larger level, it’s also to our disadvantage as a country to allow ANY kids to slip through the cracks of our society.  We need all the brilliant minds we can get, and not allowing a large portion of our students the opportunity to reach their best potential makes absolutely no sense, especially for something as asinine as a school schedule.