“Rich Get Richer” as Applied to Third Graders
Annie Murphy Paul of Time Magazine discusses the Matthew Effect in her article “Why Third Grade Is So Important: The ‘Matthew Effect.’” In class, we learned about the “rich-get-richer” scheme, which is commonly dubbed as the Matthew Effect. We were given a set of ordered nodes, each with an outgoing link that had a certain probability of pointing to its immediate neighbor on the left, or to the node which a neighbor points to. If a specific node has multiple outgoing links pointing to it, then the probability that the next node will also point to it increases. This is known as the “rich-get-richer” phenomenon, and can be applied to multiple real-world situations.
Annie Murphy Paul chose to examine the presence of the Matthew Effect in the American education system. She asserts that the third grade is the most important year in the education of a child. According to Paul, “it’s the year that students move from learning to read -decoding words using their knowledge of the alphabet-to reading to learn.” This transition is critical in terms of the child’s literacy development. If a third grader has quickly made this transition and is ready to use their perfected ability to read to educate themselves, they are set far above their struggling classmates. Returning to the example used in class, this intelligent child would be analogous to the first node that has multiple outgoing links to it. He or she will move on to learning more at a faster rate, thus gaining more knowledge and setting themselves up to be in higher level classes and perhaps a more prestigious middle school. Those on the other hand, however, enter what Paul calls the “fourth-grade slump.” They become frustrated with themselves quickly, and thus lose the desire to ever properly make the literary transition. These children are analogous to the nodes that do not receive an outgoing link early in the process. The probability of these nodes ever receiving links, like the better opportunities the first student receives, continues to decrease as the first student receives more and more due to his or her growing intelligence.
While the Matthew Effect can be unpredictable, the case of young children developing their ability to self-educate via literature strongly displays the effect. Recognizing crucial turning points such as third grade can help educators minimize the effects of the “rich-get-richer” process, and thus improve upon the success of students moving forward in the American education system.
http://ideas.time.com/2012/09/26/why-third-grade-is-so-important-the-matthew-effect/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/u81/Stanovich__1986_.pdf