A Lesson in Book Club

Tonight, my book club met (within the National 4-H Youth Advisory Committee). This is a club that teaches different views of leadership and success through writing. The lead of this club is Steve Barr, co-owner of Osborn & Barr.

We discussed the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. This was an interesting book that discussed privilege and factors that attribute to success that the individual has no control over. For example, it is stated in the book, that hockey players are more likely to receive play time if they were born during a certain time frame. This is due to the fact that they are older, and therefore bigger and can be more aggressive. They then get more individualized coaching and additional play time on the ice. Interesting statistic and thought… especially considering that the child has no control over it. Some are born with certain advantages over others, however, advantage or not, it is still the individual’s responsibility to put forth all of their effort.

We also discussed how our committee could potentially be an “outlier” in regard to what projects we choose to undertake. I then raised the viewpoint, from a larger lens, that the 4-H program as a whole is an outlier in the aspect of its positive youth development programming.

My favorite quote from the book was, “Hard work is a prison sentence, only if it doesn’t have meaning” (Gladwell 150).

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Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. Little, Brown and Company.