Gladwell's The Most Surprising, Interesting, And Dubious Moments

The Most Surprising, Interesting, and Dubious Moments Throughout the novel, there were several moments that provoked me to reflect and think about what Gladwell was saying. While reading, I found the section about why people of Asian heritage are typically better at math than those from western culture surprising. What I found most surprising about this section was how something as simple as language can affect the mathematical abilities of a whole race. Gladwell writes that, “They have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten-one. Twelve is ten-two. Twenty-four is two-tens-four and so on. The difference means that Asian children learn to count much faster than American children” (229). To me, this was surprising because I never would have thought that language …show more content…
The biggest “ah-ha” moment I had while reading was when Gladwell discusses how a higher IQ does not necessarily provide any advantage. This sparked me to reflect on our society's method of determining intelligence. Gladwell notes that, “The relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point. Once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage” (79). Gladwell’s notion that you do not have to be incredibly smart, just smart enough changed the way I thought about our society. In our society, a student’s intellect is typically judged by sets of testing or IQ numbers. While reading, I realised that our society puts too much stress on defining individual’s intellect based on numbers. When applying for college, applicants SAT and ACT scores, as well as GPA are looked at to determine the student's intelligence. During this process, students whose scores are a few points short are denied even though they are just as capable as those who are accepted. Therefore, I was able to recognize that as a society we automatically believe that having superior or higher