July Assignment

1. The writing style in Dark Tide was intriguing in that it had various perspectives from different people. In the beginning, I was slightly confused because I had expected the same person to be narrating the entire story; I had actually expected the entire book to be told from the perspective of Isaac Gonzales, who appeared in the prologue. However, as I read on, it became clear what the purpose of each introduced character was, and I liked how Puleo tied all of these seemingly unrelated roles together in the end to convey his ideas. Although the beginning was somewhat difficult to understand and like, by the end of the book I found the story both informative and enjoyable to read.

2. One thing that I disagree with in Outliers is when Gladwell discusses how being born at a certain time will give people an advantage over each other; he includes schools and the educational system in this claim. Gladwell states that students who are born earlier in the year and are therefore more mature and capable than their slightly younger peers are seen as more intelligent, and receive more attention from teachers than their "slower" classmates. As a result, the gap between the two groups continues to widen until there is an obvious difference in the perceived ability of the students. However, I believe that rather than the gap becoming larger, it actually shrinks and evens out by the time students reach their high school and college years. If Gladwell's theory were the case, wouldn't all the level 3 classes be filled with students born in the summer, and the honors and AP classes with fall and winter? Instead, based on my own observations, there seems to be an even distribution of birthday months throughout each class level, a sign that the gap does not necessarily widen like Gladwell claims it does. Perhaps his theory is true in elementary or middle school; however, I stand by the opinion that the difference becomes smaller almost to the point of being negligible as students get older.