Having read and loved The Tipping Point, I eagerly waited to hear what Malcolm Gladwell would have to say to independent school leaders. In 2005, Time magazine dubbed Gladwell one of the worldÕs 100 most influential people. Gladwell spoke in tandem with his colleague, Adam Gopnik, a fellow staff writer at The New Yorker and a prolific author in his own right.
I was interested because I appreciated GladwellÕs extraordinary capacity to make sense out of social psychology theory and research and to apply it in a meaningful way to real life phenomena. I was not disappointed as Gladwell took on the mythology associated with Ivy League schools. Gopnik, while not entirely sharing GladwellÕs cynicism about the ÒIvy brand,Ó voiced some real concerns about the current trend toward a focus on achievement rather than accomplishment. Gladwell challenged independent school leaders to examine their assumptions about Ivy Leagues Ð are the Ivy League institutions truly academically better than other colleges and universities? And, if so, ÒbetterÓ at what? ÒBetter at branding,Ó says Gladwell. And, what about the monopoly that U.S. News and World Report holds on the weighing and measuring of colleges and universities. Just how are they assessing merit? Gladwell tells us how: with three primary criteria Ð SAT scores, selectivity, and endowment.
Students admitted to the Ivies have higher SAT scores. As an independent school consultant and psychologist, I am reminded of the arsenal of evidence that these tests are neither culture- nor color-blind. Listening to Gladwell one cannot help but reflect that the U.S. and News World Report criteria seem to reek of white privilege.
Gladwell has another beef: What other institutions, he intones, are evaluated based on the quality of their applicants prior to their arrival? This is not, he points out, an assessment of anything the school has accomplished. In a droll tone he asks, would we ever assess a hospital prior to its treatment of patients?
Continued at the National Association of Independent School website
Write Dr. Lynn Friedman