Forget the 10,000-Hour Rule
My Advice to Black Families Navigating White Schools
I attended one of the best private schools in New York City for twelve years (not Dalton). What follows is my response to Culture Club contributor Greg Thomson’s review of American Promise, a documentary about black boys who attended The Dalton School. Don’t be lazy, read his review first.
In lower school, my homeroom teacher attempted to blame my hyper-enthusiasm for Shel Silverstein’s poetry on my parents’ divorce and my mother’s absenteeism. I was allegedly choosing not to read “real” books because I couldn’t. I was illiterate because I came from a broken home. BAM! She’d marshaled every pertinent stereotype to come up with a perfectly bogus theory.
The facts were as follows: I was a highly creative child — I had at least ten independent art projects going on at home at any given time — drawn to an acclaimed writer and visual artist whose classic poems and skin color (for some reason I thought he was black and, to this day, my lovers all vaguely resemble him) inspired me beyond anything else going on in writing at that time. My parents had been married for ten years and it simply didn’t work out. My mom had a very demanding job that allowed her to pay for my education and afford me a host of other accoutrements, including constant supervision. I was a little mischievous with a penchant for sick pranks, but there was nothing wrong with my brain.
My mother marched down to my school to tell that teacher off. Had she not intervened, I may have been singled out, labeled as dumb, and never escaped that pigeonhole. You know how that story ends . . . with that self-fulfilling prophecy thing. In a highly competitive school environment, confidence about one’s intelligence is everything — even more so for black children who always battle stereotypes, however subtle.
There were many other incidents throughout grade school, college, and beyond that required similar vigilance and, as they say, fight. All were crucial to ensuring that I would have the credentials that I deserved (I worked hard) and for which my Mom paid through the nose.
For many black parents, the guarantee that their children’s future — and by that I mean, at least a middle-class one — will be secured following these excessively expensive educations is their entire motivation for going down the private school path. But it’s not enough for any parent — and particularly black parents whose kids battle perception issues constantly throughout their education — to expect the schools to do the work. My current crush, Malcolm Gladwell (he possesses a slight resemblance to Shel Silverstein, no?), adds theory to what I know only anecdotally.
I’d like to go out on a limb and suggest that the 10,000-hour rule is not the most important takeaway from Gladwell’s Outliers, at least not for black parents and their children navigating primarily white schools. Rather, it’s a relatively small point he makes in a subchapter about a skill that psychologist Robert Sternberg calls practical intelligence that deserves attention in this context. Practical intelligence is “knowledge that helps you read situations correctly and get what you want.” Parents who possess this intelligence (usually those from the middle and upper classes) are highly involved in their children’s schools and education, encourage their kids to speak up, ask questions, and ultimately imbue them with the sense of entitlement that leads to their successful navigation through school and, ultimately, life.
How does this all relate to American Promise? As Greg argues so well, the parents/filmmakers featured in the film are highly educated, solidly middle-class professionals. Yet, instead of accepting some responsibility for their children’s relative failure — they struggle academically primarily because of learning disabilities — the filmmakers imply that racial injustice is to blame. If we are to follow Gladwell’s theory to its logical conclusion, middle-class parents with presumed practical intelligence should have been so engaged in their children’s education that disaster should’ve been averted. What happened? Were they an exception to his rule? Maybe.
Race and class have always been inextricably linked in the black community. And I’d like to suggest that with respect to certain issues, culture may play more of a role than class in determining some parents’ practical intelligence quotient. Dealing openly with learning disabilities — a factor that adversely affects both children’s ability to succeed at Dalton — is one of those issues.
From my experience, we have always possessed a cultural bias against highlighting and addressing mental quirks of any kind. If I had a penny for every time one of my friends or family members questioned or made fun of me for championing therapy, I’d be a full-time working artist right now. I can’t fully explain the frightening contradiction between one of the fathers in the film being a psychiatrist and his unwillingness to effectively deal with his son’s ADHD, but omitting cultural hang-ups as a possible factor would be disingenuous.
The perpetuation of outdated and harmful cultural mores is unacceptable if our intent is to ensure the best possible outcome for our children. I say, if you’re a black parent (really, any parent) sending your kid(s) to highly competitive schools, forget the 10,000 hour rule and head straight to Outliers Chapter Four, Part Three for some practical intelligence. If you don’t have it already, get some. If you do, use it. It will be invaluable to your children’s success.
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