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Chapter Two

Summary: Chapter Two: Teresa DeBrito

Shepaug Valley Middle School, in rural Connecticut, once served three hundred students at a time. As rising real estate prices have made the area less affordable for young families, total enrollment has dropped and is expected to drop further in coming years. Correspondingly, there has been a decline in class size; whereas classes used to have as many as twenty-five students, they now sometimes have as few as fifteen. According to conventional wisdom, this will benefit the remaining students, because when it comes to class size, smaller is better. That is why the expensive private school a half-hour away from Shepaug Valley proudly advertises its average class size of twelve. 

However, Shepaug Valley’s principal, Teresa DeBrito, is concerned. In her experience, learning suffers when classes get too small, because in middle school, lively class discussions require a critical mass of diverse voices. DeBrito’s view has been confirmed by studies. For class sizes ranging from the high teens to the mid-twenties, a few students more or fewer make no measurable difference to instructional quality. Quality suffers, however, when the class size goes above that range—but also when it goes below. A graph with class size on the horizontal axis and student achievement on the vertical axis has the shape of an inverted U.

The enrollment example is just one illustration of the general concept of the inverted-U curve. We know that beyond a certain point, having more of something brings what economists call diminishing returns. An extra $10,000 in income makes a much bigger difference in happiness to a family earning $50,000 per year than to one earning $500,000. But we have a harder time accepting that too much of a good thing is generally bad. Rich families have a harder time raising well-adjusted children than middle-class families do. The big reason is that part of growing up is learning to do without things from time to time. When a child asks for, say, a pony, the cash-strapped middle-class parent has an easy time saying “no.” A rich parent, by contrast, has to say, “I won’t” instead of “I can’t,” and that leads to a more challenging conversation, which not all parents are able to navigate.

Analysis: Chapter Two

Gladwell challenges society’s idea of advantages. In this case, he questions the supposed beneficial effects of smaller classroom sizes on educational outcomes. Gladwell introduces studies researching the relationship between class size and academic performance for two reasons. First, he uses the studies to make an argument about what constitutes an “advantage” in education. Second, he uses the studies to illustrate how people will blindly follow the status quo even when it is not supported by evidence. Gladwell introduces the school’s principal, Teresa DeBrito, to support his idea about class sizes. Classroom dynamics shift when class sizes change significantly, and these changes affect the quality of students’ education. Gladwell uses the analogy of the inverted-U curve to illustrate where the perfect class size lies. He argues that it is wrong to assume smaller classes are categorically better for students. The perfect class size, lying in the middle of the inverted-U curve, is one that is small enough to not overwork the teacher and large enough to encourage critical thinking and discussion. 

Gladwell’s introduction of an un-named executive further supports his argument that underdogs are successful because of their disadvantages. However, that success does not necessarily translate to parenting. Gladwell indicates the executive’s wealth creates parenting challenges and that the executive understands the advantages his children have could be disadvantages. Gladwell’s argument that too much money can be detrimental seems unusual at first, but his central thesis is that the traditional definition of advantages should be challenged. Therefore, just as Goliath’s strength was not always a benefit, neither is money once people earn a certain amount. However, it is important to note that Gladwell includes his own opinions about wealth and happiness when making the argument about money and parenting and does not include any conversation with the children being raised in extravagant wealth. The most important point Gladwell makes in this chapter is that it is not wise to categorize something as either good or bad. These categorizations are based on societal misconceptions regarding wealth and status. For example, people automatically assume that the most expensive option is also the best or most prestigious. Gladwell scrutinizes these assumptions about strength, wealth, power, and prestige throughout the rest of the book.

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