It’s an interesting read. Senior Political Correspondent Grace Ho was definitely at the top of her game when it comes to PSLE. She scored 276. Let that sink in first...
That number would be any parent’s dream here. Because that number will get you anywhere in the Singapore School System. And not just anywhere, you will be able to apply to the best schools (even if it may be a considered as a lousy school).
Imagine Simon Cowell slamming on the golden buzzer for your extraordinary performance on stage. And Simon knows talent when he sees one. An endorsement from him is as good as PSLE scores hitting above 270 in our local academic stage. Mind you, Grace got 276.
Well, there was no golden buzzer for Grace. Although she was overjoyed when she showed her form teacher her results, her teacher however said: “We think you could have done better.” Yes, 276 is just not good enough.
Grace’s reaction is best captured in her own words. ““This was because two years prior, the school had produced a national top pupil with a score of 288. I was too stunned by her remark to consider that by “we”, she might have meant only herself or the school principal.””
“Instead, I thought I had fallen 12 points short of society’s expectations of me. I felt like a failure.”
Imagine that again, you have topped the school, with 276, but you feel like a failure. Well, maybe even in the best school, if you fall below their expectation, instead of feeling self-validated, you are made to feel lousy.
While Grace wrote that “life is not defined by PSLE results”, the truth is that the Freudian slips are deafening if you do not make the mark. Parents may give your child a sympathetic ear for her or him not making the grade, but that same sympathy would turn to unreserved rage when their own child fails to make the mark.
I know this, because I was one of the parents I am talking about, when my son handed me his PSLE results many years ago (he is now taking his A levels).
Can we blame the teacher? Can we blame the parents? Can we blame the school system? Can we blame meritocracy? Can we blame me?
I think we are all running the same one-track race towards a unidimensional definition of success in a hyper-competitive society that is obsessed with economic growth measured by a myopic metric.
Simon Kuznet, the award winning economist who revolutionised econometrics, once asked: “What are we growing? And why?”.
Most times, our governments get caught with the first question, and forget about the second, because growing for growing sake can be all-consuming and highly addictive. What’s more, when you are at the top, your resounding achievement blinds and deafens all. Who doesn’t savour that mountain-top high, right?
Alas, this race starts from the home. The child will compete for their parents’ attention. The parents will compete with other parents for their attention. The school will compete with other schools for attention. The government will compete with other governments for attention.
And this endless, hyper-competitive cycle goes back to the child. It starts all over again from there. As he or she grows up, and enters the workforce, this cycle gets even more demanding, at times, soul-sapping. But it never stops, because, like they say, you snooze, you lose.
The unspoken toxicity in our meritocratic society is not that our children don’t try hard enough. It is how their hard enough is just not enough by way of comparison no matter how hard they have given of their best. Such society defines them by one ruler, that is, their grades on paper, and not by how different they are from one another, and how such differences, if placed on a kinder clock of development, would blossom at their own time.
This is somewhat similar to what Grace wrote: “In school, as in life, and work, you will face pressure from people who say 276 isn’t enough even if they can’t hit the mark themselves.”
She added: “More than 20 years ago, my best wasn't good enough for my teacher. There are days when I still don't hit the mark, but I'm okay. No matter what your results are, no matter what anyone says to you, hang in there. You'll be okay, too.”
Well, that’s good, timeless advice from the heart of grace. And it is an advice that will always hit the mark because it is based on building the relationship rather than keeping scores.
And as long as we as parents bear that in mind, and in our hearts, our children will flourish at his or her own time. This is because it is not run on society’s undifferentiated clock of development, one that is always in a hurry, but by one defined by unconditional love, where relationships are always placed above grades.
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