One thing about Malcolm Gladwell's books is certain: they are going to spark discussion. Whether you think Gladwell is a journalistic genius with a knack for finding the "other side of the story" or a wannabe sociologist who makes grand pronouncements based on carefully hand-picked research, you must acknowledge that his work prompts us to look carefully at some previously held assumptions. In his latest, David and Goliath, Gladwell asks us to reconsider the concept of the underdog. He attempts to show us that disadvantages can actually be advantages, and vice versa. Maybe, he argues, the Davids among us are not facing such long odds after all, and maybe being underestimated is actually a benefit in the long run.

Right off I must say that this premise is not particularly earth-shattering to me. Perhaps I have watched too many professional sports contests to know that even a so-called lowly team can play the game of their lives and upset a stronger opponent (thus the cliche "on any given Sunday"). And I have seen firsthand that some of the most effective and profound coping strategies come under times of greatest duress. I am also not at all surprised when Gladwell "surprises" us with considerations of police departments, doctors, and civil rights leaders who found clever ways to turn weakness into strength and/or get their overconfident opponents to do something foolish based on their own misguided assumptions.

Despite the rather uninspired premise, the popular media has already embraced Gladwell's underdog stories and the book sits atop the non-fiction best seller lists. So it cannot be dismissed too quickly. For those of us in education, Gladwell covers three particularly relevant topics in his book: small class size as a hallmark of a quality education, the potential advantages of dyslexia, and the value of an Ivy League/top tier education--for which he has already generated much buzz and a "60 Minutes" appearance. I will take these one at a time, since I suspect all will come up in the context of Colorado Academy over the next few months.

Class size:
What is the ideal class size in education? That question vexes schools, both public and private, every year, as they juggle practical realities with pedagogical goals. Schools like CA tout smaller class size as one of the distinct advantages for teachers to deliver skill and content while getting to know their students better, but they must charge hefty tuitions to cover the costs for making it a reality. Public schools battle budget cuts and state standards test pressure in determining the most reasonable and financially sustainable equation for class size. This is a complex issue with many layers; unfortunately Gladwell is intent on over-simplifying it through limited case studies. In the end, he really says nothing more definitive about class size than "in most cases you don't want classes to be too big, but then again you don't want them to be too small either." The best learning, it seems, happens somewhere in that sweet spot, which falls in a range between 17-22.

When I informally polled CA faculty, they indicated 15-16 would be their ideal class size, but they also know that going over this mark by a few students is not going to substantially change their students' experiences. (What might change as numbers get closer to 20 per class is the timeliness with which teachers can grade and return papers, or the efficiency with which they can offer extra help.) On the other hand, our teachers also agree that it is possible to have a "too small" class, especially if one has a quieter group of kids. Some of the energy and dynamism of a class can be lost.

The vast majority of Colorado Academy's classes in all three divisions fall somewhere in Gladwell's desired range. I suppose we could use that fact as a bragging point, but I am not entirely sure we would know what we are bragging about given Gladwell's vague assertions about teacher effectiveness vis a vis class size. That this number of students is "ideal" seems to have more to do with the positive quality of the teachers he analyzes, and those kinds of teachers tend to make good things happen no matter what the class size.

Dyslexia:
Those of us who have had any experience working with dyslexic students will not be caught off guard by Gladwell's conclusion that many of the most successful people in the "real world" have dyslexia. These folks have learned many outstanding coping strategies and "work-arounds," despite their difficulty reading; again, no surprise. The amazing thing from my perspective is how far schools in general have come in our understanding of learning differences of all kinds. Twenty years ago--perhaps even more recently than that--dyslexia was not well understood and certainly the accommodations we now commonly grant students were not regularly made. My very talented and intelligent older cousin, for example, was labeled as having limited intelligence in the 1970s; today his intelligence and kinesthetic learning would thrive in a solid academic setting, provided he was given the standard accommodations of extended time on certain assignments, books on tape, access to teacher notes, and (perhaps) a foreign language waiver.

We have also become aware of the many case studies of dyslexics who have achieved great success. In David and Goliath Gladwell profiles trial attorney David Boies, but we could also point to Ted Turner, Charles Schwab, Richard Branson, Carol Moseley Braun, Whoopi Goldberg and John Irving, just to name a few known examples. Retroactively, it is also assumed that Albert Einsten, Pablo Picasso and Alexander Graham Bell, among others, were dyslexic. So again, there is nothing too revelatory here, but it is a good reminder for us that learning differences of all kinds often encourage those who have them to practice greater patience, perseverance and outside-the-box thinking. Those are incredibly valuable life skills.

College choice: As we might have guessed, this particular topic has caused the most buzz in the popular media. Gladwell's argument is, in a nutshell, that attending one of the country's most elite institutions of higher learning may not be all it's cracked up to be. In other words, being a small fish in a big pond might actually have negative consequences, whereas being a big fish in a small pond might pay huge dividends. He cites a few careful chosen examples of students whose aspirations were dashed when they attended prestigious liberal arts colleges and found themselves in the middle of the pack or lower, as compared to their brilliant peers. This created stress and insecurity in these otherwise talented college students and even forced them away from career options for which they might actually have been well suited. Meanwhile, other students chose to attend other colleges and universities with less prestige and notoriety and found that they could do extremely well, thereby boosting their self-confidence and enhancing their future options. Certainly, that scenario can and does play out in colleges (both selective and not) throughout the country. College is always a bit of a crap shoot for students; what you get out of it may depend in large part on circumstances you can't foresee or control.

This is why in the end I am confident CA students will do well wherever they choose to attend college. Prestige should have little to do with their choice, nor is it the most telling aspect of whether or not they will have success. We have alumni who have done very well for themselves having attended Harvard or the University of Colorado or Trinity University or Puget Sound or . . . the list goes on. I also know of students who have struggled at all of those places and perhaps even transferred. Life doesn't always go in a straight line. There are so many routes to success we can't possibly boil it down to a simple either/or as Gladwell seems to want to do. Ultimately, I continue to think that the range of schools our students attend is good for the matriculating seniors and for us as an institution.

Whereas Gladwell made the concept of "10,000 hours" resonate in his last work Outliers, I don't see a similar hook here in David and Goliath. The conclusions drawn don't come off as revelatory nor particularly well researched. Still, given the success of his books, I am confident Gladwell will be back again with another thought-provoking effort in the future. I know better than to bet against this David.