Smaller class sizes do not necessarily create an environment more conducive to learning. 

This statement from 5 More Incredibly Counterintuitive Statements from Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath – B&N Reads (barnesandnoble.com) talks about how smaller classrooms don’t mean that the students learn more. Their reasoning is that the students won’t be as engaged and won’t be as excited to know if there are fewer students. But a smaller learning environment is more intimate and gives all the students room to engage in the learning. Versus when you are in a big classroom although more students are engaged not everyone gets a chance to be heard or seen by the teacher. 

 There are times when it’s better to be a big fish in a little pond than a little fish in a big pond. 

5 More Incredibly Counterintuitive Statements from Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath – B&N Reads (barnesandnoble.com)

This summary talks about how it’s better to be somewhere you can stand out. They say that if you go to a big university, you are 30% less likely to graduate from that school. Because they have so many students, you either keep up with everyone else or you fail and fall behind everyone else. This is true because teachers at big universities don’t have the time to keep up with every student that struggles or needs one on one help, and they are usually the ones that don’t end up graduating. 

There are such things as “desirable difficulties.”

5 More Incredibly Counterintuitive Statements from Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath – B&N Reads (barnesandnoble.com)

This summary talks about how it’s good to go through struggles. They said it makes you work harder than your peers and teaches you how to deal with adversity. In the article, they have  A recent study by Julie Logan at City University London states that around a third of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. They said this difficulty help them come up with ways to compensate for the disadvantage they had and find new ways how to do things that their peer might not have ever come up with. This is what separated them from their competition and keeps them innovative and without their difficulty, they would have never created what they did.