Outliers

Over break I got the opportunity to read a very interesting book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. The book was about success and how it is achieved within our society. It goes on about how success usually has more to do with birth, socio-economic status, parents, etc. etc. than with raw will.
I'm sure that many people have thought about how luck often has more to do with how well you do in life and what you succeed at than work, and to a certain extent this book backs that up (although it points out that all the opportunities in the world are useless to you if you aren't willing to put in the effort to take advantage of them). But that is not the part that really interested me. What caught my attention was the idea that most of our potential as a people is wasted. Individuals are not given the opportunities that they need to succeed in a given field and so they don't. There are a LOT of examples in the book. For instance in youth athletics, the 'best' and the 'strongest' are the ones that are given the most opportunity. They receive better coaches, more games, and more chances to practice and to play. These players also tend to be the oldest within their given level. So they go on to get better and better while the youngest players are never given any opportunity. If these young kids were given a chance to succeed, then they might have gone on to become great players, but since they were being compared to older more mature players, no one saw any potential in them they were never even given that chance.
To say the least it is not an easy problem to fix. In fact, just identifying this problem can be extremely difficult. But it is an interesting idea to consider. Out of all the talent that the U.S. or the world has to offer, most of it goes unused and squandered because opportunities never present themselves to the individuals who need them to succeed.