Let’s pretend for a moment the Lord has granted you super human strength that would turn the Hulk from green to red at the arm wrestling table. He then gives you one simple task: Fold an 8.5X11 piece of paper in half, 50 times. I’m sure you could think of a thousand more fun and worthwhile endeavors for your strength, but humor me, and let’s start with paper folding. You’ll need all of your strength too. Mere mortals can’t get 7 folds. The hulk might stop at about 30 unless maybe you talked about his mom. But you, your goal is to keep going until you reach 50. Now, how tall do you think that piece of paper would be? As tall as a refrigerator? A house? Assume that I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t a crazy answer. 5 empire state buildings stacked on top of each other?
Not even close.
Your 8.5X11 piece of paper would now stretch from the earth to the sun. Approximately 93 million miles. And if we went to 51 folds, your paper would be tall enough to make a return trip to earth. This is the power of exponential growth. One fold doubles the thickness, but the next fold is 4 times thicker, then 8, 16, 32, 64 and on and on. This rate of growth is hard for us to wrap our minds around. In Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell explores this question: What is it that makes some ideas, diseases, merchandise, whatever it might be, spread at an exponential rate? What makes things spread like wildfire? But wait a second, wildfire isn’t quite strong enough, wildfire doesn’t really spread exponentially. I’m starting, right here and now, a new “spreading” simile. How can we get things to spread like paper folding? That works, right? Maybe not, but paper folding kicks wildfire’s butt in spreading every time.
But back to Gladwell’s question: Why do some things spread at an exponential rate? Think YouTube viral videos. What makes a video jump from 10 views in one week to over 2 million three weeks later? What makes it spread like folding paper? Gladwell answers this question with three neat bullet points.
1) You have to have the right people involved. Paper folding epidemics of any kind, need a few specific types of people that we all know but are actually quite rare. These people include gifted persuaders, trustworthy know-it-alls and those crazy extroverts who know hundreds and hundreds of people from all walks of life. If a video link comes from these types of people, we are much more likely to watch it and to send it to someone else.
2) The second thing is that the message (or video in this case) must have a “stickiness” factor. That is, it must somehow resonate with us and make us want to pass it on. You only forward that video link to your friend if it made you laugh out loud while you watched it again and again. That video’s hilarity is it’s “stickiness.”
3) The third part is the message must come when we are contextually/historically ready for it. You might get the same hilarious video from every persuader, know-it all, and relationally gifted extrovert you know but you aren’t watching it if it’s September 11th, 2001. Wrong time to be a hilarious viral video. For something to spread, it has to be the right time historically and contextually.
Sounds easy right? Wait for the just the right time and get your sticky product/idea in the hands of the right people and presto—the paper starts folding. This is the genius of Malcolm Gladwell. He is a master at explaining complex ideas to the masses in a fascinating, page- turning style. I could have chosen from 20 different studies or stories as fascinating as the paper folding example. The Tipping Point is a fun fact bonanza.
For instance did you know that subway graffiti can have an effect on the murder rate in New York City? The stickiest part of the book for me (besides the paper folding example) was the Broken Window Theory. This theory says that there are often very small contextual things that get an epidemic started. If a person walks by a building with a Broken Window they might assume that either no one lives there or they don’t care how it’s treated and proceed to break the rest of that window, take what he wants or even make himself comfortable. Eventually, this building is trashed and the next hoodlum says, “Man, this building is trashed. That one next to it can’t be much better; I wonder what they got in there?” Slowly the neighborhood starts to crumble. The disorder spreads from the buildings to the streets and chaos ensues. The building owner might complain about the neighborhood, demand police root out the criminal underworld; maybe he drops a few thousand in campaign contributions to the next mayoral candidate promising to be tough on crime. But believers in the BWT think he should have just fixed his window in a timely manner. BWT says that crime is a manifestation of disorder, and disorder is in the smallest details.
Now, let’s take a look at this theory in practice. In the 1980’s, New York was experiencing a terrible crime wave. We are talking 2,000 murders and 600,000 felonies per year. In response to this crime wave, New York leaders decided to apply the Broken Window theory. They attacked small, surface level offenses that were simply causing disorder. They cracked down on subway graffiti and subway fare jumping (over 100,000 per day!). Life as a windshield squeegee man became a high wire act in avoiding arrest. If you were publicly drunk or caught urinating in public, you were going to jail. They obsessively fixed the broken windows. The results were astounding. By the mid 90’s murders were cut in half, felonies were reduced by two-thirds and in the subway alone felonies dropped by 75%.
Seems simple enough right? Fix the small stuff, big stuff follows. As a teacher reading this, your mind starts racing. Before our eyes we seem to be watching the disintegration of the Kansas City Missouri School District and you can’t help but think of the possible broken windows. Before reading Tipping Point, I would have jumped immediately to huge systemic problems: The disintegration of the urban family unit. Lack of quality administrators and teachers. Students with low basic skills. Lack of Parental support etc. All problems that appear to have zero short term solutions. But who in the world would have thought attacking subway graffiti and fare jumping would cut murders in half, in less than 10 years? It’s hopeful and unsettling at the same time. Hopeful because I feel change is attainable. Unsettling because I’ve grown quite comfortable throwing my hands in the air and saying, “Nothing can be done with problems so big.”
Off the top of my head here are some possible broken windows of public schools: Join me in my practice in naivety.
1) Building maintenance and cleanliness. Teachers and kids can’t focus on learning amongst urban decay. My school does an amazing job of this. Also, Mr. Daniel needs to clean his desk off more than once a week. It’s the broken window of his classroom.
2) Dress code: What students wear and how low their trousers ride affect their attitude. It’s not popular with the kids but it’s true. Sadly, I’m guessing only about 10% of teachers really take the time to look for dress code violations (That noise you hear is me whistling, looking around the room and waiting for the subject to change).
3) Jokes: What students are allowed to joke about affects how they treat each other and their attitude towards learning. We don’t make jokes at the expense of others regardless of how innocent it might seem. We don’t joke about fighting. Students are held accountable for what they joke about.
4) The bus: Finish this sentence with the profession of your choice: “There is not enough money in the world to get me to be a____________” This is easy for me: middle school bus driver. It’s 100 times less appealing than cleaning sewers and even selling bridal gowns. Driving a bus is hard. The drivers don’t seem to have the disciplinary authority of teachers and the kids know it. Even with a bus supervisor, it’s hard to keep an eye on everyone with the large distance between the front and back seat. The bus is a tough place. Things get crazy. When the bus is crazy, kids think it’s okay to be crazy at school. The bus needs something that says this is a safe, orderly place. Bus seating charts? Class management training for bus staff? Something.
5) Students entering the building: What if every single teacher and administrator not on morning duty lined up and welcomed students with a high five, a fist bump or any other sort of positive welcome to school? We are glad you’re here. We’ve been waiting for you. Today is important. Let’s have a great day.
Let’s not focus on the fact that I’m a little late to the Malcolm Gladwell party and celebrate the fact that I finally made it. I loved every page of Tipping Point. It’s not only a fascinating read that is guaranteed to make you share at least two interesting facts with someone you know, but it makes your mind race with possibilities in your own line of work, in your own life even. I hope I start a tipping point for the Tipping Point. I want to talk to people about it. I want it to spread like wildfire being folded 50 times.
Thanks for reading.
-td
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