Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell Page B

himself. The transition goes smoothly. Alex is used to being treated with respect. He is seen as special and as a person worthy of adult attention and interest. These are key characteristics of the strategy of concerted cultivation. Alex is not showing off during his checkup. He is behaving much as he does with his parents—he reasons, negotiates, and jokes with equal ease.
    It is important to understand where the particular mastery of that moment comes from. It’s not genetic. Alex Williams didn’t inherit the skills to interact with authority figures from his parents and grandparents the way he inherited the color of his eyes. Nor is it racial: it’s not a practice specific to either black or white people. As it turns out, Alex Williams is black and Katie Brindle is white. It’s a
cultural
advantage. Alex has those skills because over the course of his young life, his mother and father—in the manner of educated families—have painstakingly taught them to him, nudging and prodding and encouraging and showing him the rules of the game, right down to that little rehearsal in the car on the way to the doctor’s office.
    When we talk about the advantages of class, Lareau argues, this is in large part what we mean. Alex Williams is better off than Katie Brindle because he’s wealthier and because he goes to a better school, but also because—and perhaps this is even more critical—the sense of entitlement that he has been taught is an attitude perfectly suited to succeeding in the modern world.
    4.
    This is the advantage that Oppenheimer had and that Chris Langan lacked. Oppenheimer was raised in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Manhattan, the son of an artist and a successful garment manufacturer. His childhood was the embodiment of concerted cultivation. On weekends, the Oppenheimers would go driving in the countryside in a chauffeur-driven Packard. Summers he would be taken to Europe to see his grandfather. He attended the Ethical Culture School on Central Park West, perhaps the most progressive school in the nation, where, his biographers write, students were “infused with the notion that they were being groomed to reform the world.” When his math teacher realized he was bored, she sent him off to do independent work.
    As a child, Oppenheimer was passionate about rock collecting. At the age of twelve, he began corresponding with local geologists about rock formations he had seen in Central Park, and he so impressed them that they invited him to give a lecture before the New York Mineralogical Club. As Sherwin and Bird write, Oppenheimer’s parents responded to their son’s hobby in an almost textbook example of concerted cultivation:
    Dreading the thought of having to talk to an audience of adults, Robert begged his father to explain that they had invited a twelve-year-old. Greatly amused, Julius encouraged his son to accept this honor. On the designated evening, Robert showed up at the club with his parents, who proudly introduced their son as J. Robert Oppenheimer. The startled audience of geologists and amateur rock collectors burst out laughing when he stepped up to the podium: a wooden box had to be found for him to stand on so that the audience could see more than the shock of his wiry black hair sticking up above the lectern. Shy and awkward, Robert nevertheless read his prepared remarks and was given a hearty round of applause.
    Is it any wonder Oppenheimer handled the challenges of his life so brilliantly? If you are someone whose father has made his way up in the business world, then you’ve seen, firsthand, what it means to negotiate your way out of a tight spot. If you’re someone who was sent to the Ethical Culture School, then you aren’t going to be intimidated by a row of Cambridge dons arrayed in judgment against you. If you studied physics at Harvard, then you know how to talk to an army general who did engineering just down the road at MIT.
    Chris Langan, by contrast, had only the