> From my experience the difference in ability stems more from culture than from genetics. This is actually his point: the chapter from which this excerpt is t

> From my experience the difference in ability stems more from culture than from genetics. This is actually his point: the chapter from which this excerpt is taken is from the second half of the book, which is all about how our behavior (and thus our performance) is profoundly influenced by our cultural heritage. There's a great chapter, for instance, on how cultural differences regarding deference to authority resulted in Korean Air's high crash rate in the 90's. There's no mention of the rice paddies in this excerpt, but Gladwell argues that rice paddy cultivation was considerably more complex and required considerably more labor than typical farming practices in the West, a long history of which resulted in a culture of persistence. (Which might explain just why Asian public schools are way tougher.)