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Outliers, Revisited · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:23
Speaker 2: In the middle of our preparations for season seven of
0:27
Speaker 2: This Your Favorite podcast, the Revisionist History team got on
0:32
Speaker 2: a train to Philadelphia, four of us carrying props, recording equipment,
0:38
Speaker 2: and extra microphones. Our destination the Gothic, ivy covered Cathedral
0:44
Speaker 2: of Higher Learning that is the University of Pennsylvania. And
0:48
Speaker 2: why did we go Because we had cooked up a
0:51
Speaker 2: little experiment and we were curious to see how it
0:55
Speaker 2: would fly.
1:03
Speaker 3: Thank you welcome.
1:05
Speaker 2: We commandeered one of the main lecture halls at the
1:07
Speaker 2: Wharton School. I did seventy five or so students, all seniors, smart,
1:12
Speaker 2: focused discipline, future masters of the universe, and asked them
1:17
Speaker 2: to answer ten simple questions, such as, how many years
1:22
Speaker 2: of your K twelve education were a public school and
1:25
Speaker 2: how many were a private school at the time of
1:28
Speaker 2: your graduation from high school? How many continents had you
1:32
Speaker 2: visited at any point during your middle school and high
1:35
Speaker 2: school years? Did your parents provide you with a private tutor?
1:39
Speaker 4: Are you doing that?
1:40
Speaker 2: Mister pretty good? Joined myself. I looked out at Rose
1:46
Speaker 2: and rose at eager students hunched over their deaths in anticipation,
1:50
Speaker 2: took a deep breath and began So my name is
1:56
Speaker 2: Malcolm Gladwell. I am the host of the podcast Revision's History.
2:00
Speaker 2: The theme of this season of Revision's History is experiments,
2:04
Speaker 2: and one of the experiments of this season involves all
2:08
Speaker 2: of you. So, you guys are guinea pigs. Yes, guinea pigs,
2:16
Speaker 2: because in the manner of all guinea pigs, they were
2:19
Speaker 2: entirely in the dark about what we had in store
2:22
Speaker 2: for them. And as you probably guessed from some of
2:30
Speaker 2: the questions that you were given, what I'm trying to
2:33
Speaker 2: do is I'm conducting an experimental investigation into the nature
2:38
Speaker 2: of the privilege of the people in this room. The
2:41
Speaker 2: students quickly finished the questionnaires and put their names and
2:45
Speaker 2: birth dates at the top. My producers, Elowise and Harrison
2:48
Speaker 2: are sitting at a big table at the front of
2:50
Speaker 2: the room, in full view of all the guinea pigs.
2:53
Speaker 2: They go through the completed questionnaires one by one and
2:57
Speaker 2: use the answers to generate a number, a score, which
3:01
Speaker 2: they write on a giant white sticker with a big
3:03
Speaker 2: fat sharpie. And now the real experiment begins. I'm going
3:08
Speaker 2: to sign every one of you a number. If they
3:11
Speaker 2: can figure out what their number means. They will understand
3:14
Speaker 2: something essential about how broken the system was that propelled
3:18
Speaker 2: them to the IVY League and how to fix it.
3:22
Speaker 2: Just peel off the back and I'd like you to
3:24
Speaker 2: fix the sticker to your chest so we can all
3:28
Speaker 2: see each other's numbers. You're going to look around the room,
3:30
Speaker 2: see everyone else's numbers, see your number, and hopefully that
3:34
Speaker 2: will aid you in your investigation of what exactly the
3:39
Speaker 2: nature of this experiment is. I'll just read the students
3:42
Speaker 2: sat there with their numbers stuck to their chests, looking
3:46
Speaker 2: around in befuddlement, trying to make sense of everyone's score.
3:50
Speaker 2: I tried to help them figure it out, gave them
3:52
Speaker 2: hints nudges. First, think about this. I gave you a
3:59
Speaker 2: series of questions. Some of those questions involved a yes
4:02
Speaker 2: or no answer. So you saw two people, Hellowy's and Harrison,
4:06
Speaker 2: who quite quickly, in the space of about five minutes
4:10
Speaker 2: ten minutes, went through seventy five or so responses and
4:14
Speaker 2: were able to very quickly and easily assign you a number.
4:17
Speaker 2: So think about this. Logically, it wasn't a complex algorithm, right,
4:22
Speaker 2: there was no computer used Alowys, How long would you
4:25
Speaker 2: say you were spending in, Harrison, how long would you
4:27
Speaker 2: spending on each questionnaire? Six seconds?
4:32
Speaker 4: Five?
4:33
Speaker 2: Six seconds? Okay, that's a clue, guys, let's go come on. Hi.
4:39
Speaker 2: My name is Abe.
4:40
Speaker 4: They might have just looked at the zip code, because
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Speaker 4: that's a pretty good predictor of privilege just in and
4:45
Speaker 4: of itself.
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Speaker 2: Abe has derived his hypothesis from question six, what is
4:50
Speaker 2: the zip code your family lived in during your high
4:53
Speaker 2: school years? Perhaps he speculates the number on his chest
4:57
Speaker 2: with some kind of complex, mysterious derivative of his zip code.
5:02
Speaker 5: I didn't see if you had a computer, but if
5:03
Speaker 5: you did.
5:04
Speaker 2: There was no El's Was there a computer?
5:06
Speaker 6: Now?
5:07
Speaker 7: I did have to use a calculator.
5:09
Speaker 2: Gota Abraham, with all due respect, are you suggesting that
5:12
Speaker 2: Eloise and Harrison had memorized every zip code? It's plausible
5:19
Speaker 2: they're very smart. Not that smart, I'm Zach. I think
5:25
Speaker 2: it really has to do strictly with the private versus
5:28
Speaker 2: public education system in the US. Nope, that's not what
5:32
Speaker 2: we were looking for. Hi, my name is Joseph.
5:35
Speaker 8: A question that I thought was very interesting on there
5:37
Speaker 8: was about if you have any siblings and if so,
5:39
Speaker 8: how many.
5:41
Speaker 2: Nope, not that either.
5:43
Speaker 6: Hi, I'm Kaylee.
5:44
Speaker 9: One that I don't think I've ever been asked in
5:47
Speaker 9: relation to this was if I drank when I was
5:49
Speaker 9: in high school?
5:50
Speaker 1: What age did I get drunk at?
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Speaker 2: Kayley's referring to question number nine in high school, did
5:58
Speaker 2: you drink alcohol? And if yes, when did you first
6:01
Speaker 2: get drunk? Could you come up with any reason why
6:05
Speaker 2: I would have asked that question? Or do you think
6:06
Speaker 2: that's just one of the ones that I'm blowing smoke on?
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Speaker 9: I have my own hypothesis, but I can't.
6:13
Speaker 2: Oh, come on, what if I'm wrong? This is all
6:17
Speaker 2: about being wrong? Oh, this is all about being wrong.
6:30
Speaker 2: Once upon a time, in two thousand and eight, I
6:32
Speaker 2: wrote a book called Outliers, the first chapter of which
6:36
Speaker 2: was devoted to a phenomenon discovered in the nineteen eighties
6:39
Speaker 2: by the Canadian psychologist Roger Barnsley. Here's some of what
6:44
Speaker 2: I wrote. The explanation for who gets to the top
6:47
Speaker 2: of the hockey world is a lot more interesting and
6:50
Speaker 2: complicated than it looks. Good, Lord, I do not sound
6:55
Speaker 2: like I'm enjoying reading my own book listening to this
6:58
Speaker 2: part of the Outliers audiobook. Now, I'll admit I have
7:02
Speaker 2: some regrets about that chapter. We'll get to that, I promise. Anyway,
7:08
Speaker 2: it occurred to me as I planned our trip to
7:10
Speaker 2: Philly that I should talk to Barnsley again and go
7:13
Speaker 2: over his discovery one more time, make sure I understood everything.
7:18
Speaker 2: So I called him up and asked him to retell
7:20
Speaker 2: the story of how in the early nineteen eighties he
7:23
Speaker 2: and his wife Paula stumbled upon what has come to
7:26
Speaker 2: be known as their relative age effect.
7:29
Speaker 7: We were living in Lethbvirge, Alberta, and we went to
7:34
Speaker 7: a Junior A hockey team. It was the Lethbridge Broncos.
7:37
Speaker 7: At that time.
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Speaker 2: Barnsley's wife Paula started reading the game program, which had
7:43
Speaker 2: the rosters of both teams listed in it.
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Speaker 7: Paula said over to me, Roger, when do you think
7:49
Speaker 7: all of these hockey players were born? And I remember
7:54
Speaker 7: thinking to myself, well, you know, that's kind of a
7:56
Speaker 7: silly question. So I did a quick calculation. I said,
8:00
Speaker 7: you know, Paula, they're average age eighteen. It's about nineteen
8:04
Speaker 7: eighty two, so they're probably all born in around nineteen
8:07
Speaker 7: sixty four. And she said, no, no, no, I'm not
8:10
Speaker 7: talking about the year. I'm talking about the month, and
8:14
Speaker 7: I said, what are you talking about? And she opened
8:17
Speaker 7: up the page of the program where they had listed
8:20
Speaker 7: the roster of the team, and it just jumped out
8:24
Speaker 7: at us, just jumped out that the majority of these
8:27
Speaker 7: players were January, February, March, and then you seem to
8:31
Speaker 7: get the aud April in May, and very few in
8:33
Speaker 7: the fall. And I said, my goodness, that's just remarkable.
8:39
Speaker 2: He went home and expanded his search further. Everywhere he
8:43
Speaker 2: looked in competitive hockey, same thing. For some reason, most
8:47
Speaker 2: players were born in the first part of the year.
8:50
Speaker 7: And that's when that famous forty thirty twenty ten by
8:53
Speaker 7: the Courters of the Year showed up.
8:59
Speaker 2: The famous forty thirty twenty ten phenomenon that he's talking
9:02
Speaker 2: about is what in Outliers I referred to as the
9:05
Speaker 2: iron law of Canadian hockey. Quote. In any elite group
9:10
Speaker 2: of hockey players, the very best of the best, forty
9:13
Speaker 2: percent of the players will have been born between January
9:16
Speaker 2: and March, thirty percent between April and June, twenty percent
9:20
Speaker 2: between July and September, and ten percent between October and
9:25
Speaker 2: December end.
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Speaker 8: Quote.
9:30
Speaker 2: Now why is this. It's because Canada is obsessed with hockey,
9:35
Speaker 2: and coaches start picking players for all star traveling squads
9:39
Speaker 2: at the age of nine or ten. Since the eligibility
9:43
Speaker 2: cut off for Canadian hockey is January first, that means
9:47
Speaker 2: the coaches are choosing among nine year olds who are
9:49
Speaker 2: as much as twelve months apart, and twelve months age
9:53
Speaker 2: difference at the age of nine is a lot. The
9:56
Speaker 2: January kids are bigger and stronger and more coordinated than
9:59
Speaker 2: the December kids, which means that the January kid is
10:03
Speaker 2: more likely to be chosen by the coaches for the
10:05
Speaker 2: traveling squad, which means in turn that they will practic
10:09
Speaker 2: two or three times as often, play more games, have
10:12
Speaker 2: better coaches, better competition than the kids left behind, and
10:16
Speaker 2: what began as a completely arbitrary advantage based on a
10:20
Speaker 2: quirk of birthdays turns over time into a real advantage.
10:29
Speaker 2: The same phenomenon holds to in other sports, soccer, swimming,
10:33
Speaker 2: you name it. You can find the relative age effect everywhere,
10:36
Speaker 2: and of course it also applies to the classroom. Teachers
10:40
Speaker 2: aren't any better than coaches at disentangling ability from maturity,
10:45
Speaker 2: so relatively older kids in elementary and middle school end
10:48
Speaker 2: up getting more encouragement they tend to get better grades,
10:52
Speaker 2: and they are more likely to be chosen for things
10:54
Speaker 2: like gifted and Talented programs. Meanwhile, relatively younger kids are
10:59
Speaker 2: more likely to be diagnosed with learning disorders or flagged
11:03
Speaker 2: for problem behavior. I cannot tell you how many parents
11:07
Speaker 2: have come up to me over the years and said,
11:09
Speaker 2: because I read your book Outliers, I held my kid
11:11
Speaker 2: back from starting school, and it was the best decision
11:14
Speaker 2: I ever made.
11:16
Speaker 9: Of course it was.
11:17
Speaker 2: But parents holding their kids back doesn't solve the problem.
11:22
Speaker 2: It just creates a relative age effect arms race. There's
11:25
Speaker 2: a fancy private school near me where so many parents
11:28
Speaker 2: of younger children have held their kids back that now
11:31
Speaker 2: the parents of the formerly eldest children have responded by
11:35
Speaker 2: holding their kids back, whereupon the first out of parents
11:39
Speaker 2: are increasingly holding their kids back a second time, meaning
11:43
Speaker 2: that there is at least a theoretical possibility that in
11:46
Speaker 2: the most competitive corners of American private education, some kids
11:50
Speaker 2: may never graduate from high school. Maybe I should have
11:57
Speaker 2: seen on that coming when I wrote Outliers. I should
12:00
Speaker 2: have made it clear that I was not trying to
12:02
Speaker 2: teach neurotic, upper middle class helicopter parents how to gain
12:05
Speaker 2: the system. I just wanted schools and sports leagues to
12:08
Speaker 2: stop behaving like idiots. So Barnsley's paper on relative age
12:15
Speaker 2: effect came out in nineteen eighty five Outliers, which was
12:19
Speaker 2: I think the first time Barnsley's work got wide publicity,
12:23
Speaker 2: was published in two thousand and eight. The world has
12:27
Speaker 2: been alerted for decades to the fact that all kinds
12:30
Speaker 2: of supposedly meritocratic systems have been hijacked. Has anything changed?
12:39
Speaker 2: You're in front of your computer. Oh, I put the
12:42
Speaker 2: question to Roger Barnsley, the og of relative age effect research.
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Speaker 2: What have we learned? Can you google the roster of
12:51
Speaker 2: the Canadian junior hockey team national hockey team for twenty
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Speaker 2: twenty one twenty two, the current roster.
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Speaker 7: I'll do it right now, and.
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Speaker 2: I want you to go down the list of the forwards.
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Speaker 2: Just use the forwards for the sake of simplicity, And
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Speaker 2: I want you to to just read the twenty one
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Speaker 2: months of birth of the forwards on the current Canadian
13:17
Speaker 2: junior national hockey team.
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Speaker 7: Their birthdates are just their names.
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Speaker 2: I just want their birth months, okay, to see And
13:25
Speaker 2: then Barnsley repeated what his wife Paula did decades ago
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Speaker 2: at the Lethbridge Broncos hockey game. He listed the birth
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Speaker 2: months by number of the members of the national junior
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Speaker 2: hockey team. Listen for birth months of seven or higher.
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Speaker 7: Two ten, one, one, one, two eleven, eight, four two ten, five, four, five,
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Speaker 7: two six one three one one five three two four
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Speaker 7: seven to one.
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Speaker 2: It's the same thing, the same thing. They've learned nothing.
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Speaker 2: It's the same phenomenon. You saw, you saw it this
14:02
Speaker 2: forty years ago. The iron law of Canadian hockey is
14:10
Speaker 2: still an iron law.
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Speaker 7: Isn't that funny? Funny at all? It's depressing, very depressing,
14:17
Speaker 7: very depressing.
14:18
Speaker 2: Here we are both Canadians, we are we are citizens
14:22
Speaker 2: of a country that cares more about hockey excellence than
14:26
Speaker 2: anything else, must be clear, anything else. And we are
14:30
Speaker 2: leaving an astonishing amount of talent on the table, exactly
14:35
Speaker 2: and refusing to learn. What of Canada's own prominent academics
14:40
Speaker 2: forty years ago said to the hockey establishment, what are
14:42
Speaker 2: you doing? Yeah, that's right, and they didn't. They haven't
14:45
Speaker 2: done anything. Canadian hockey hasn't done anything. But maybe revisionist
14:51
Speaker 2: history can the inspiration for the revisionist history Warton School
15:06
Speaker 2: relative age effect experiment came to me when I was
15:09
Speaker 2: talking to Adam Kelly, former footballer turned university professor. Kelly
15:15
Speaker 2: is a disciple of Roger Barnsley. He works with sports
15:18
Speaker 2: leagues to help them solve their age related problems, like
15:22
Speaker 2: England's basketball Federation, which spent a small fortune setting up
15:26
Speaker 2: regional centers to identify promising players.
15:30
Speaker 3: We looked at the proportion of players who were selected
15:32
Speaker 3: into those talent centers across at the nation, and that.
15:36
Speaker 7: Was at age.
15:36
Speaker 3: Groups selected from thirteen to fifteen, both at male and female,
15:43
Speaker 3: and those who were born in birth quarter one were
15:46
Speaker 3: ten times more likely to be selected ten times.
15:50
Speaker 2: Birth quarter one is the three months closest to the
15:53
Speaker 2: English basketball eligibility cutoff date.
15:57
Speaker 3: Which is absolutely crazy, isn't it?
15:59
Speaker 2: Same old story. The talent spotters thought they were picking
16:02
Speaker 2: the most promising players, but in fact they were just
16:05
Speaker 2: picking the oldest kids because the oldest kids were, of
16:09
Speaker 2: course the tallest and most coordinated. Anyway, Kelly's also thought
16:14
Speaker 2: a lot about education.
16:16
Speaker 3: Why is everyone taking their exam at exactly the same time.
16:20
Speaker 3: Surely we should all be taking it at that same
16:23
Speaker 3: time within our lifespan. So if you're born in August,
16:28
Speaker 3: you're taking your exam almost twelve months earlier than someone
16:32
Speaker 3: who's born in September. So that person's had twelve months
16:35
Speaker 3: more learning.
16:36
Speaker 2: Than you, which is super obvious when you think about it.
16:40
Speaker 2: In New York State, all the big elementary school math
16:43
Speaker 2: and English standardized tests are in late March early April.
16:47
Speaker 2: We're talking third graders, eight and nine year olds. At
16:50
Speaker 2: that age, kids get smarter every week. Yet we're trying
16:54
Speaker 2: to assess kids by their test scores, and some of
16:56
Speaker 2: the kids were judging have been around as much as
16:59
Speaker 2: a year longer than other kids. Why don't we have
17:03
Speaker 2: the January kids all take the test in January, and
17:06
Speaker 2: the February kids in February, and on and on down
17:10
Speaker 2: the line. I have no idea, honestly no idea. So
17:16
Speaker 2: I gathered the research arm of Revisionist History with our props,
17:19
Speaker 2: recording equipment, and extra microphones and headed for the Gothic,
17:24
Speaker 2: ivy covered Cathedral of Higher Learning that is the University
17:28
Speaker 2: of Pennsylvania to see if a group of really, really
17:31
Speaker 2: smart young people can figure out the importance of the
17:34
Speaker 2: month when they happen to be born turn all your
17:40
Speaker 2: pieces of favor. That's what your name of the toms,
17:43
Speaker 2: and once you're finished, we will collect them and then
17:49
Speaker 2: we will commence the exercise. So we give out our
17:53
Speaker 2: elaborate questionnaire, but secretly, all we're interested in is people's birthdays,
17:58
Speaker 2: and then Elouise and Harrison go through each questionnaire and
18:02
Speaker 2: use the birthdays to do a simple calculation. Technically, the
18:06
Speaker 2: youngest you could be as a college senior at the
18:08
Speaker 2: time of our EXPERIMID was to be born in September
18:11
Speaker 2: two thousand and one.
18:13
Speaker 1: So if you were.
18:14
Speaker 2: Born then you got a zero zero birth privilege. If
18:18
Speaker 2: you were one month older, born in August two thousand
18:22
Speaker 2: and one, you got a one. July two thousand and
18:25
Speaker 2: one you got a two, and so on. The higher
18:28
Speaker 2: the number on the sticker, the older the student wearing it.
18:33
Speaker 2: We even had a contingency for students who might have
18:35
Speaker 2: skipped a grade somewhere along the way. You get a
18:38
Speaker 2: negative number if you were younger than the expected age
18:41
Speaker 2: of a college senior. First thing we found out there
18:45
Speaker 2: were no negative numbers in the room. Back when I
18:48
Speaker 2: was in college, I knew dozens of people who had
18:50
Speaker 2: skipped grades. Apparently that doesn't happen much anymore. But it
18:55
Speaker 2: was worse than that. There's no zero. They were a one, two, twos, threes, fours, fives,
19:08
Speaker 2: anyone less than ten stand up. One student finally stood
19:13
Speaker 2: up in a back row, a college senior who was
19:16
Speaker 2: a few months shy of her twenty second birthday. Or
19:20
Speaker 2: you're ten, Oh, a ten in a back row. Oh,
19:22
Speaker 2: another ten emerges. We've got the twelve, We've got these twelves,
19:26
Speaker 2: We've got some tens. Take a look. This is bananas.
19:29
Speaker 2: This is as bad as the Canadian national junior hockey team.
19:32
Speaker 2: In our sample of students from one of the world's
19:35
Speaker 2: most selective universities, there were no young seniors, none, not
19:40
Speaker 2: even close. There was no one at all who had
19:43
Speaker 2: been born in two thousand and one, which is the
19:46
Speaker 2: year you would expect most seniors to be born in.
19:49
Speaker 2: At one point, a student started talking about her experience
19:52
Speaker 2: in a Gifted and talented program. So I asked for
19:55
Speaker 2: a show of hands. Do you mind me asking how
19:57
Speaker 2: many of you guys were were in gifted in town
20:00
Speaker 2: to programs? Wow? Basically all of you, which makes sense right.
20:05
Speaker 2: These were a group of relatively old students and being
20:08
Speaker 2: real to the older makes it more likely to get
20:11
Speaker 2: into a gifted and talented program, and getting into a
20:14
Speaker 2: gifted and talented program makes it more likely to get
20:17
Speaker 2: into a school like Penn, which is why a group
20:19
Speaker 2: of seniors that day at Wharton were all really old.
20:24
Speaker 2: What begins as arbitrary advantage hardens into privilege, a simple
20:30
Speaker 2: fact about their own success that our students still hadn't
20:34
Speaker 2: figured out. I'm going to hear another clue, guys, the
20:43
Speaker 2: particular dimension of privilege we're interested in measuring, I'm going
20:48
Speaker 2: to say, with a great deal of certainty, is in
20:51
Speaker 2: this room the most significant form of privilege or lack
20:57
Speaker 2: of it, that you would have experienced as students. At
21:02
Speaker 2: this point, I've pulled out all the stops trying to
21:05
Speaker 2: help them. I've had people with the highest numbers stand up.
21:09
Speaker 2: At one point, I made everyone with the number over
21:11
Speaker 2: twenty get up from their seats and line up against
21:14
Speaker 2: the wall. They were still guessing, but it was like
21:17
Speaker 2: they were throwing darts with a blindfold on.
21:20
Speaker 6: There were pretty clear demographic similarity at the top end
21:25
Speaker 6: of the spectrum. Racially was the most obvious in my eyes. Yeah,
21:32
Speaker 6: but also just in general that there were very few
21:34
Speaker 6: at the low end of the spectrum was also noteworthy.
21:37
Speaker 2: How do you feel about being in the higher number
21:41
Speaker 2: group as opposed to the lower number group.
21:46
Speaker 6: I mean, it's just a fact, like it is.
21:48
Speaker 1: It's an I.
21:50
Speaker 6: Would say, I'm coming into it. I I'm aware of
21:53
Speaker 6: my privilege as a white woman, but I think it's
21:58
Speaker 6: about what you do with that privilege that's important.
22:01
Speaker 2: And then, after forty minutes of floundering in the shallow
22:05
Speaker 2: end of the revisionist history research pool, a group of
22:08
Speaker 2: students in the front row put their heads together and
22:12
Speaker 2: then raise their hands.
22:16
Speaker 3: We have a hypothesis.
22:18
Speaker 2: That's Adam. Everyone in this front row group had the
22:22
Speaker 2: highest privileged score. We handed out twenty four plus. Of
22:26
Speaker 2: course they figured it out first. They were the oldest
22:29
Speaker 2: students in the class. Next to Adam was Joseph. He
22:32
Speaker 2: was wearing a suit and a tie.
22:35
Speaker 6: Yeah.
22:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have a hypothesis.
22:36
Speaker 2: So the twenty four.
22:37
Speaker 8: Plus is that a significant factor?
22:40
Speaker 2: Here?
22:41
Speaker 3: Is age?
22:41
Speaker 2: Our absolute age?
22:43
Speaker 3: Like how old are you those?
22:45
Speaker 1: We're all a bunch of old seniors over here, older
22:48
Speaker 1: than usual.
22:50
Speaker 2: Eureka. Phase one of the experiment was over now phase
22:57
Speaker 2: two because I intended to ask them if they wanted
23:00
Speaker 2: to do something about their arbitrary privilege. In Australia, they've
23:15
Speaker 2: invented something called maturity based Corrective Adjustment Procedures MACCAPS, as
23:22
Speaker 2: it's known for provisional use in the sport of swimming.
23:27
Speaker 2: I will confess that I am madly in love with
23:31
Speaker 2: this idea. It turns out that if you take a
23:34
Speaker 2: bunch of measurements of kids and plug them into an equation,
23:38
Speaker 2: you can estimate their physical maturity quite accurately. So you
23:42
Speaker 2: don't have to rely on chronological age to assess someone's
23:46
Speaker 2: level of development. You can do one better and measure
23:49
Speaker 2: maturity directly.
23:52
Speaker 5: So what these equations do is they fight are in
23:55
Speaker 5: indices like height, weight, chronological age and sitting height, and
24:00
Speaker 5: they use those fighters to then estimate how far away
24:04
Speaker 5: a particular individual is from that point of peak growth.
24:09
Speaker 2: That's Stephen Cobley, a professor at the University of Sydney
24:13
Speaker 2: who created matcaps along with his colleague Minkel Roman. Here's
24:17
Speaker 2: how it works. Imagine we have two fourteen year old
24:19
Speaker 2: swimmers competing in a hundred meter freestyle, both with the
24:23
Speaker 2: exact same birthday, Joey and Tim. So these academics would
24:28
Speaker 2: first calculate the biological maturity status of each swimmer, that is,
24:33
Speaker 2: how far each one is from their estimated point of
24:36
Speaker 2: peak performance. So let's say, for example, Joey is actually
24:40
Speaker 2: twelve months less biologically mature than Tim at this exact moment.
24:46
Speaker 2: Then comes the cool part. Cobbley then looks at thousands
24:50
Speaker 2: of data points for fourteen year old swimming in a
24:52
Speaker 2: hundred meter freestyle and calculates what is twelve months of
24:56
Speaker 2: maturity worth on average in terms of swimming time for
24:59
Speaker 2: kids competing in that age group. He enters the data
25:03
Speaker 2: into the maturation based corrective adjustment procedures algorithm and prestow
25:09
Speaker 2: adjusts Joey's time to account for the fact that at
25:12
Speaker 2: the moment he raised Tim, he was twelve months behind developmentally.
25:17
Speaker 2: An adolescent swim meet in Cobley's ideal universe has two
25:21
Speaker 2: sets of results, the raw results and then the maturity
25:25
Speaker 2: adjusted results.
25:27
Speaker 5: What you're doing is you're effectively lowering the time of
25:31
Speaker 5: the folks who are slightly behind in terms of their
25:34
Speaker 5: maturity status.
25:36
Speaker 2: Cobbley did a test run of the maccap's algorithm on
25:39
Speaker 2: a sample of seven hundred Australian swimmers, all boys competing
25:44
Speaker 2: in one hundred meter freestyle. The first thing he discovers
25:47
Speaker 2: is similar to what we found a pen. Among the
25:50
Speaker 2: top twenty five percent of all adolescent swimmers, there were
25:54
Speaker 2: no late maturing boys, none, zero, which is an astonishing fact.
26:00
Speaker 2: Australia is a country that takes swimming as seriously as
26:03
Speaker 2: Canada takes hockey, and they have basically decided to banish
26:08
Speaker 2: a big group of young swimmers from consideration just because
26:12
Speaker 2: their talent happens not to appear soon enough. When you
26:16
Speaker 2: looked at these seven hundred swimmers, in some sense, the
26:20
Speaker 2: damage has already been done. We've already chased away the
26:23
Speaker 2: slow developers. They've quit, they've got discouraged. They they thought
26:29
Speaker 2: they were bad swimmers. They didn't realize they were simply behind. Yeah,
26:35
Speaker 2: so what happens when you run everyone's race times through
26:38
Speaker 2: the Mattcaps algorithm, adjusting for maturity, the order of finish
26:43
Speaker 2: in every race changes. They're really talented swimmers who just
26:46
Speaker 2: happen to be slower to mature now have a chance.
26:50
Speaker 2: They used to be lost to the system. Now you
26:52
Speaker 2: can tell who they are. Now you can go up
26:54
Speaker 2: to young Joey and say, I know you didn't make
26:57
Speaker 2: the final, but take a look at your matt CAP's time.
27:00
Speaker 2: You might be the best swimmer out there. What's the
27:02
Speaker 2: most somebody moved up?
27:05
Speaker 5: But we've seen large percentages, We've certainly seen big changes
27:08
Speaker 5: in ranks. So if we've got cases for events where
27:14
Speaker 5: someone who was outside let's say the top twenty, suddenly
27:17
Speaker 5: was in the top three.
27:19
Speaker 2: I read your paper and the first that I had was,
27:23
Speaker 2: oh wow, this belongs in the classroom. Right when you
27:28
Speaker 2: identify who gets into special gifted and talented programs, or
27:31
Speaker 2: when you decide who just isn't smart enough for when
27:34
Speaker 2: you look at who you discourage and who you encourage,
27:38
Speaker 2: you've got to be making the same mistake.
27:40
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, I think so. I think the cautionary bit
27:45
Speaker 5: that we have to remember is it's that old question
27:47
Speaker 5: of yeah, but how far do we go? So if
27:50
Speaker 5: we're going to factor, if we are going to factor
27:52
Speaker 5: relative agent in education or biological development in education adjustments,
27:57
Speaker 5: shouldn't we be factoring in other things that we know
28:00
Speaker 5: are influential?
28:01
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Why wouldn't we, Well, exactly why wouldn't we If
28:08
Speaker 2: we've developed a better way of identifying talent. Why wouldn't
28:11
Speaker 2: we want to use it everywhere? Back at Wharton, I
28:18
Speaker 2: climbed up on my soapbox. I talked about how maccaps
28:22
Speaker 2: had freed swimmers from the tyranny of birthdays, communicated my
28:26
Speaker 2: enthusiasm for bringing the Australian Revolution to the shores of
28:30
Speaker 2: the United States. So in Australia they started to do this.
28:33
Speaker 2: Eleven year olds are all swimming the one hundred meter freestyle.
28:37
Speaker 2: We've got twelve kids. We have, you know, an order
28:40
Speaker 2: of finish. Then they run the times through an algorithm
28:43
Speaker 2: and have a new Now, would you feel comfortable with
28:48
Speaker 2: all of your if you go back to your k
28:51
Speaker 2: through twelve experiences? Would you feel comfortable if they ran
28:54
Speaker 2: all of your test scores through an age correction algorithm?
28:58
Speaker 2: Around the room I saw young people of promise, focused,
29:02
Speaker 2: eager they would be my disciples. I was so full
29:06
Speaker 2: of excitement. I put the question to a vote, yes
29:11
Speaker 2: or no, I say to a shorthands who likes the idea.
29:16
Speaker 2: There was a great stirring and wrestling. My heart leapt
29:19
Speaker 2: into my throat. I thought I had brought the birthday
29:21
Speaker 2: rights revolution into the heart of the lion's den. I
29:25
Speaker 2: looked up, looked around, and nothing, no roar of support,
29:33
Speaker 2: only a long, cold silence. I've never seen less enthusiasm
29:40
Speaker 2: for a great idea in my life. Wait, what is
29:42
Speaker 2: the matter with you guys? A young man spoke up first.
29:47
Speaker 10: Well, it's like, be completely honest. It's to be selfish
29:51
Speaker 10: about it. It would probably have heard our chances of
29:53
Speaker 10: being right here in this room because I'm old. For
29:57
Speaker 10: my grade, I did well my standardized test scores. Maybe
29:59
Speaker 10: if they readjusted it, I would be more in the mediate.
30:02
Speaker 2: He was a twenty two year old senior in college.
30:05
Speaker 10: So selfishly I would say, no, it's not a good
30:08
Speaker 10: idea from a societal standpoint.
30:10
Speaker 2: Perhaps, so you're being honest.
30:12
Speaker 10: I'm being honest. Yeah, it's like saying, uh, you know,
30:15
Speaker 10: legacy admissions or something like that. My father went to
30:17
Speaker 10: PEN and my mother went to pen.
30:18
Speaker 2: Oh you're drowning. I'm drowning.
30:21
Speaker 10: Yes, if we get rid of this, you know, But
30:23
Speaker 10: I'm just going to be honest.
30:27
Speaker 2: It's fantastic. Who else wants to Then Mateo raises his hand.
30:32
Speaker 2: He is an eighteen on his sticker, an age privilege
30:35
Speaker 2: advantage of a year and a half.
30:38
Speaker 4: And I think that's a poor idea because it assumes
30:41
Speaker 4: that everyone who is older is like always going to
30:43
Speaker 4: be smarter, and I want whose owner is always going
30:45
Speaker 4: to be less smart. I've seen some pretty old people
30:47
Speaker 4: do some terrible things.
30:49
Speaker 2: No, no, no, BUTTAO does not what it does well, it's neutral.
30:53
Speaker 2: It just adjusts for the age, Grady.
30:55
Speaker 4: I want my score to be my score.
30:57
Speaker 2: But wait, wait, I want to I want to. Can
30:59
Speaker 2: I just harp? You said you want your score to
31:01
Speaker 2: be your score?
31:02
Speaker 6: Yeah?
31:02
Speaker 2: But why is? Why is an adjusted score a score
31:05
Speaker 2: that accounts for your degree of maturity somehow less characteristic
31:09
Speaker 2: of who you are than an unadjusted score. I would
31:12
Speaker 2: have thought the opposite. A score that doesn't include information
31:16
Speaker 2: on your level of maturity would seem to be more
31:18
Speaker 2: artificial than one that does.
31:20
Speaker 4: I don't know, I guess i'd have I would want
31:21
Speaker 4: to look at the algorithm before I made an actual judgment,
31:24
Speaker 4: because I'd be surprised if I was okay with everything theoretically,
31:28
Speaker 4: that everything that the algorithm would say.
31:31
Speaker 2: The students stood up, one by one, using their prodigious
31:34
Speaker 2: powers of analysis and imagination to come up with one
31:38
Speaker 2: objection after another. Why do you think you guys are
31:42
Speaker 2: so hostile to it. Two attempts to remedy the situation.
31:47
Speaker 8: My fear with the algorithm is that it could be gamed.
31:49
Speaker 8: So if this were implemented where we know that if
31:52
Speaker 8: you're younger, you get say one hundred point bump in
31:54
Speaker 8: the SAT or are viewed more favorably throughout your educational career,
31:58
Speaker 8: then we're probably sending our kids off to kindergarten at four,
32:01
Speaker 8: or we're planning whenever we have our kids, looking at
32:03
Speaker 8: whever the cutoff date is for kindergarten, you know, in
32:05
Speaker 8: September maybe, and saying all right, we're going to reproduce
32:08
Speaker 8: nine months before that in December or January.
32:14
Speaker 2: And the current system that's being gamed. We're responding to
32:18
Speaker 2: the gaming, are we not?
32:20
Speaker 8: Yeah, so I guess I'm the fears that the algrum regained.
32:26
Speaker 8: And yes, exactly.
32:32
Speaker 2: I put my hand on the table to steady myself.
32:35
Speaker 2: My head was spinning. These were the children of outliers,
32:38
Speaker 2: children raised according to the rules of a game I
32:41
Speaker 2: kind of helped set in motion. And now the consensus
32:45
Speaker 2: among seventy five elderly ivy leaguers was that the system
32:49
Speaker 2: should remain rigged in favor of the elderly. The apple
32:53
Speaker 2: cart must remain upright with the shiniest and oldest apples
32:58
Speaker 2: on the top. Now do I blame them, No, I don't.
33:05
Speaker 2: This is what happens when we give up on fairness
33:07
Speaker 2: as an essential principle. All that remains is cynicism. The
33:12
Speaker 2: students a PEN do not see the point of changing
33:15
Speaker 2: the system because their parents did not see the point
33:18
Speaker 2: of changing the system, and their parents didn't see the
33:21
Speaker 2: point because the schools didn't see the point. And the schools,
33:25
Speaker 2: for goodness sake, can't even rise from the slumber of
33:28
Speaker 2: their indifference to see that it makes no sense to
33:31
Speaker 2: give everyone an assessment test on the same day we
33:35
Speaker 2: gain the things that we've given up on. I try
33:40
Speaker 2: my best in Outliers, but I subtitled the book the
33:44
Speaker 2: Story of Success, And if I learned anything from that
33:47
Speaker 2: afternoon at PEN, it's that we want to think about
33:49
Speaker 2: success as a word to describe ourselves, our own progress.
33:55
Speaker 2: But it's not really people who are successful. It's the
33:58
Speaker 2: systems around us. Great students and great hockey players come
34:03
Speaker 2: from great teams and great classrooms. And if you want
34:07
Speaker 2: to judge the success of those teams in classrooms start
34:10
Speaker 2: by looking at their composition, like when was everyone born?
34:17
Speaker 2: And if we can't get that one right, God help
34:21
Speaker 2: us with everything else. All right, Thank you guys. I
34:29
Speaker 2: hope this has all been fun. I hope this makes
34:32
Speaker 2: you feel free to wear your numbers for the balance
34:35
Speaker 2: of the school year. Revisionist History is produced by Eloise Linton,
34:43
Speaker 2: Leeman Gestu, and Jacob Smith, with Tolly Emlin and Harrison VJ. Choi.
34:48
Speaker 2: Our editor is Julia Barton. Our executive producer is Mia Label.
34:53
Speaker 2: Original scoring by Luis Kara, mastering by Flon Williams, and
34:57
Speaker 2: engineering by Nina Lawrence. Fact checking by Keishaw Williams. Special
35:02
Speaker 2: thanks to somon ohod Kahn for production help on this episode.
35:07
Speaker 2: I'm Malcolm glava Hey Revision's History listeners. I'm capping off
35:17
Speaker 2: this episode with a preview of a new Pushkin show
35:21
Speaker 2: that really has me hooked. It's called Death of an Artist.
35:24
Speaker 2: Death of an Artist has all the elements of a
35:26
Speaker 2: gripping story, a suspicious death, tumultuous relationship, a murder trial,
35:31
Speaker 2: questions of morality, feminism, power and balance, and a divided
35:35
Speaker 2: art world. On September eighth, nineteen eighty five, up and
35:38
Speaker 2: coming artist Anna Mendietta fell from the thirty fourth floor
35:42
Speaker 2: window of her husband and famous sculptor Karl Andre's apartment.
35:47
Speaker 2: Host Helen Molesworth asks was Karl Andre involved? You'll revisit
35:52
Speaker 2: on his untimely death, the trial that followed, and both
35:55
Speaker 2: the protests and silence that have followed this story ever since. Okay,
36:00
Speaker 2: here comes a sneak peek. You can follow the story
36:03
Speaker 2: by searching for death of an Artist wherever you get
36:06
Speaker 2: your podcasts.
36:08
Speaker 1: It's in a nineteen seventy three Iowa city. There's a
36:13
Speaker 1: damp chill in the air. We are on a sort
36:16
Speaker 1: of shabby block in front of a brick apartment building
36:20
Speaker 1: with a white door in need of a paint job
36:22
Speaker 1: and a storefront window with its blind strawn shut. The
36:28
Speaker 1: sidewalk just in front of the door is covered in blood,
36:33
Speaker 1: and it looks like the blood might be seeping out
36:35
Speaker 1: from under the door jam. It's a busy weekday and
36:40
Speaker 1: as pedestrians pass the puddle of blood, they notice it
36:43
Speaker 1: and casually step around it. Eventually, a man in a
36:47
Speaker 1: green and black plaid jacket pauses and looks around as
36:52
Speaker 1: if looking for an explanation. When none comes, he walks away.
36:57
Speaker 1: Then a well dressed white woman uses her umbrella to
37:00
Speaker 1: poke at the bloody puddle, but after a moment or
37:03
Speaker 1: two of inspection, she also walks away. Finally, an old,
37:09
Speaker 1: older gentleman emerges from a nearby storefront and silently cleans
37:13
Speaker 1: up the mess, and the evidence of whatever happened is
37:16
Speaker 1: suddenly gone, and with it disappears any account of whose
37:21
Speaker 1: blood was spilled and how. The whole scene is being
37:29
Speaker 1: captured by two young women in their twenties, sisters who
37:33
Speaker 1: sit in an old car park nearby. One of them
37:36
Speaker 1: holds a super eight camera, the kind you'd make home
37:39
Speaker 1: movies with back then the other snaps photos with a
37:43
Speaker 1: thirty five millimeter camera. They are Anna and Raklein Mendietta,
37:49
Speaker 1: Cuban refugees who landed in this unlikely place as children
37:58
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three. Anna was a first year MFA
38:01
Speaker 1: student at the University of Iowa. She was funny, loud, outrageous,
38:06
Speaker 1: and had to take no prisoner's vibe and in the
38:10
Speaker 1: way of sisters, she had roped directlyan into helping her
38:13
Speaker 1: make a new piece, and like many works on a maid.
38:17
Speaker 1: It would come to seem tragically prophetic in the wake
38:20
Speaker 1: of her death.
38:22
Speaker 9: She basically staged what looked like the remnants of, you know,
38:29
Speaker 9: physical violence with what looked like blood in the doorway
38:32
Speaker 9: of a building, and I thought it was extremely powerful
38:36
Speaker 9: for a very young artist to be doing that, and
38:39
Speaker 9: to be doing it in this small, largely white town
38:42
Speaker 9: of Iowa City was fascinating to me.
38:46
Speaker 1: That's Connie Butler, one of the many curators who would
38:49
Speaker 1: come to admire and study on a Mendietta's work in
38:51
Speaker 1: the decades that followed. The photos in film the Mendieta
38:55
Speaker 1: sisters took that day would ultimately become a work of
38:59
Speaker 1: art called Moffat Building Piece.
39:02
Speaker 9: The fact that it still exists only in these little
39:04
Speaker 9: thirty five millimeters slides, which you know you have to
39:07
Speaker 9: get very close to with a loop, and it's a
39:11
Speaker 9: very intimate way of viewing these things. You know, that
39:15
Speaker 9: implicates you as a viewer too, almost as if you
39:17
Speaker 9: are yourself looking at a crime scene.
39:20
Speaker 1: Anna's interest in blood wasn't only meant to shock. She
39:23
Speaker 1: was keenly aware of violence and injustice. When she made
39:27
Speaker 1: them off At Building Piece. She was investigating her own
39:30
Speaker 1: community's reaction to a brutal crime, a rape and murder
39:35
Speaker 1: that had happened on campus a few months before. Here's
39:38
Speaker 1: how she explained her inspiration.
39:41
Speaker 11: A young woman was killed, raped and killed at Iowa
39:45
Speaker 11: in one of the dorms, and it just really freaked
39:47
Speaker 11: me out. So I did several rape performances type things
39:51
Speaker 11: at that time, using my own body. I did something
39:55
Speaker 11: I believe in and that I felt I had to do.
39:59
Speaker 1: That's not actually Anna Mendieta's voice you're hearing. That was
40:03
Speaker 1: Tanya Burghera, another artist from Cuba who you'll hear from
40:07
Speaker 1: more later. Anna Mendieta's question was could you make art
40:16
Speaker 1: about something so awful? And she used blood, not paint.
40:21
Speaker 1: Blood is the most essential substance of life. Could it
40:24
Speaker 1: jolt people out of their daily routines? Could blood make
40:28
Speaker 1: people pay attention? She didn't know it yet, but the
40:32
Speaker 1: Moffat Building piece was about to be her first major artwork,
40:36
Speaker 1: and in a circular way, that's kind of terrifying. The
40:40
Speaker 1: question she asked about how we react when we encounter
40:44
Speaker 1: the residue of violence. This question would haunt all of
40:48
Speaker 1: us after she died. I'm your host Helen Moulesworth and
40:56
Speaker 1: from Pushkin Industries, Something Else and Sony Music Entertainment. This
41:01
Speaker 1: is Death of an Artist, Episode one. The haunting for
41:18
Speaker 1: my entire professional life. I've been a member of something
41:21
Speaker 1: called the art world, an exclusive network of artists, gallery dealers, curators, collectors,
41:28
Speaker 1: and philanthropists for two decades. I was lucky enough to
41:32
Speaker 1: be a museum curator, making me one of a small
41:35
Speaker 1: group of cultural insiders who determine what art we see
41:39
Speaker 1: and how we talk about it. In the museum world
41:42
Speaker 1: and in art history, there are a lot of unspoken
41:45
Speaker 1: rules about what you can say publicly and what is
41:48
Speaker 1: supposed to stay private. It turns out I wasn't that
41:52
Speaker 1: good at sticking to the script, and I guess I'm
41:56
Speaker 1: still not good at it, because I'm going to tell
41:58
Speaker 1: you Anna Mendietta's whole story, all the way to its
42:02
Speaker 1: shocking and troubling end, and much to my surprise, I
42:09
Speaker 1: discovered it's a story many of my colleagues in the
42:12
Speaker 1: art world would prefer I didn't tell at first, blush.
42:20
Speaker 1: It seemed like people didn't want me to talk about
42:23
Speaker 1: it because of who else is part of that story.
42:26
Speaker 1: Anna's husband, the famous sculptor Carl Andre. He is one
42:30
Speaker 1: of the so called fathers of minimalism, a cultural hero
42:34
Speaker 1: to many are revered artists with lots of connections, and
42:39
Speaker 1: he was a suspect in Anna's death. Even though Carl
42:46
Speaker 1: Andrea and Anna Mendieta were a highly visible art world couple,
42:50
Speaker 1: even though something terrible happened between them the night she died,
42:54
Speaker 1: you will not read about it on a museum wall
42:56
Speaker 1: label or in most art history textbooks reviews of their
43:00
Speaker 1: exhibitions tend to take care of it in a sentence
43:03
Speaker 1: or two. You would not know that Mendieta's death divided
43:07
Speaker 1: the art world in nineteen eight, and in many ways
43:11
Speaker 1: still does. I'm not the first person to try and
43:19
Speaker 1: tell this story. In fact, many of the voices you'll
43:23
Speaker 1: hear in this show are from interviews conducted by investigative
43:27
Speaker 1: journalist Robert Katz. He published a book in nineteen ninety
43:31
Speaker 1: that remains the most comprehensive look into this art world tragedy.
43:36
Speaker 1: He spoke with dozens of Anna and Carl's friends in
43:39
Speaker 1: noisy restaurants, in parks, in busy offices, and you'll hear
43:43
Speaker 1: the voices of some art world insiders on these tapes
43:46
Speaker 1: who have since decided not to talk. Most folks don't
43:51
Speaker 1: want to discuss what happened that night. They don't want
43:53
Speaker 1: to talk about what the ramifications of that night were
43:56
Speaker 1: on the art world. They don't want to contemplate what
43:59
Speaker 1: it means when a community is torn apart by violence,
44:03
Speaker 1: and they don't want to discuss whether or not justice
44:06
Speaker 1: has been served. These different folks not talking for all
44:11
Speaker 1: of their different reasons means that a veil of silence
44:15
Speaker 1: started to fall over this project, and I can't lie.
44:20
Speaker 1: The more silence we encountered, the more sad and frustrated
44:24
Speaker 1: I became. And the more silence we encountered, the more
44:28
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk,