Rice Paddies and Outliers

Haley Scholars Fall 2012 Reading Groups   

In chapter eight, “Rice Paddies and Math Tests,” Malcolm Gladwell continues to explore his claim that cultures can have significant impacts on various aspects of success. He takes an in-depth look at the work ethics of farmers in southern China and reveals how rice cultivation can be an intricate, laborious, and, if done well, rewarding process for an entire family. And over long periods of time, the processes and culture of rice cultivation appear to yield benefits to a people well beyond the farms.

According to Gladwell, rice farmers, the majority of whom have limited resources, improved the returns on their labor by “becoming smarter, by being better managers of their own time, and by making better choices.” In other words, more than simply working hard, they worked intelligently and strategically. Gladwell proposes that cultures “shaped by the tradition of wet-rice agriculture and meaningful work” tend to produce students with the fortitude to “sit still long enough” to find solutions to time-consuming and complex math problems, for instance.

You’ll recall the proverbs Gladwell cites that emerged in southern China such as “No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.” Help us come up with local remixes to that saying. In no more than 10 additional words, compose useful and creative insertions to complete the following sentence:

No one who can __________________________________ throughout a semester fails to achieve academic success at SIUE.