Engaging in meaningful work

After a morning marked by frustration (unsuccessfully trying to access our security system with my Interac PIN, accidentally deleting a blog post, etc.), I sank down in my chair and listened to a tape of Malcolm Gladwell's presentation about developing human potential. It was delivered on Wednesday at the InfoPresse Innovations conference in Mtl.

He began by referring to Michael Lewis's theory of capitalization, that is, the rate at which a community takes advantage of its collective human potential, and then noted that only a small percentage of people in any given group ever fulfill their full human potential.

Gladwell attributes this blockage of capitalization to various factors, including poverty and cultural attitudes. One statement that I found to be particularly interesting was MG's assertion that "there weren't more dumb people in 1908 than there are right now", it's just that they were "stuck on farms" or other places where opportunities for developing their talents were limited.

Furthermore, according to MG, we all have inherent talents for math, music, etc. It's just a question of how hard we work and how much we are shaped by cultural attitudes towards learning.

I had two reactions to this:

• We would like to think that we live in a country that encourages education. The truth is, we live in a country that imposes rules about what we'll learn and when. It's camouflaged with assertions of ensuring that our children are meeting certain goals every year, but reality, I think, is far less generous. Most schools push math and science, all the while cutting arts and music programs. How's that for limiting opportunities?

• At first I objected, "we can't all go to university and be smarty-smartlets. Farms need to operate in order for everyone to eat and many farmers are passionate about what they do. Who are we to say that they're 'stuck' on their farms?" But then I chilled out a little.

MG is not supporting an elitist view of education in which all children must aspire to being the next Gladwell. The point is to offer children enough opportunities so that if they're suited to being farmers, they will become farmers, and if they're not suited to being farmers, they can discover whatever it is that will ignite their potential.

Who can argue with that? Isn't the belief that we're all inherently able far more human than believing "girls aren't good at math" and "men don't make good teachers"? Haven't we seen enough exceptions to these archaic stereotypes to finally invalidate such thinking?

I'd like to believe that I'm inherently good at math but that I was never disciplined enough to excel at it, because I found my niche in words and books.

I was lucky in that I discovered my potential early, but how many people out there are still searching, because they were never given the opportunity to explore their talents?

Too many, as MG reminds us.