On the way down to Wintergreen today we listened to more of Malcom Gladwell’s book, Outliers. The last chapter was perhaps the most interesting to me–about the KIP school in Bronx, where they get rid of summer vacation and essentially catch inner city kids up to their elite private school brethren, at least in mathematics. The notion is that while the rich kids go to summer camp and read, the poor kids just watch TV and play. They fall behind over the summer break. Apparently Korea and Japan don’t really have much of a summer vacation–which to Gladwell, explains their excellence at quantitative subjects entirely.