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[quote=Anonymous]Malcolm Gladwell offers interesting insights.

He demonstrates that the quality of education (at any level) has no correlation to class size.  Yet conventional wisdom insists that students perform better in small classes. But the evidence doesn’t necessarily show that reducing class size does anything to improve the quality of education.  Shocking as this sounds, at some point, small classes actually have the reverse effect.

Gladwell also sides with those who believe that preferential treatment of minorities in gaining admittance to elite universities doesn’t help them in life.  In fact, placing a student who is not ready for a quantum leap in education may actually harm a what is a potentially promising student.  His reasoning is, good students feel inferior and lose confidence when placed so-called genius students.  So, they drop out or turn to other fields of study, when the fact was — they were simply good students, but not great.

Finally, Gladwell shows that the “elite” college and universities actually don’t produce better students than lower-ranked schools, and may actually do great harm to some students who otherwise would excel in academia.

This book isn't going to settle the debates around these issues, but it's nice to see some data and evidence to support suppositions. [/quote]

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