What Is Malcolm Gladwell's 10 Thousand Hour Rule

Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hour Rule
Many people in our society are familiar with the saying “Practice makes perfect,” and according to neurologist Daniel Levitin, “‘...ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything’” (Gladwell 13). Some parents push their children at a young age to participate in activities so they may succeed through these ten thousand hours of practice, but where is the line between helping children to succeed and pushing them too hard or too far? Although it can be worthwhile to push children to work hard for achieving Malcolm Gladwell’s ten thousand hour rule, it can also affect “... children’s happiness, mental and physical health, and overall
Andre Agassi, a famous tennis player, was pushed to play by his father, starting at a very young age. All of his extreme practice resulted in a tremendous amount of fame that many people would kill to have, but it was against his will and in the price of his happiness as Agassi explains, “I keep begging myself to stop, and I keep playing, and this gap, this contradiction between what I want to do and what I actually do, feels like the core of my life” (267). As for Amy Tan, she was forced to participate in multiple activities that she felt she was not exceptional at which lowered her self-esteem. It is clear the Tan was emotionally damaged by the disappointment she felt her parents had in her as she notes, “I felt the shame of my mother and father as they sat stiffly through the rest of the show” (7). In both Agassi and Tan’s experiences, their happiness was sacrificed in the hopes of gaining success, but was it really worth
While parents may want their children to succeed, they also need to have “...freedom to sort out their own values and discover their own interests” (Grant 17) and therefore, should be pushed to try out a plethora of activities without having much pressure put on them. The reason for pushing a child to participate in activities should not be so they master one of them, but so they gain experience and have pleasure from doing each one. Parents should push children to participate and succeed in activities at a young age in order to enrich their childhood, but once a child becomes unhappy or unwilling to take part in an activity, pushing them any further crosses the line between helping a child to succeed and pushing them too