The art of scoring unbelievably high marks in board examinations is indeed a fine one, but achieving success in life is more than that
Twitter timeline was full of jokes ahead of the CBSE class 12 results on May 28. In a rather apt satire on what ails our society and systems, many people, including cricketer Ravindra Jadeja, posted innovative tweets on how, more than the families of children who wrote the examinations, the neighbours and relatives were anxious. It is indeed an ironical fact of our society — shall we call it score syndrome — that marks often becomes an overwhelming determinant of a student's abilities and intelligence. There is also a tendency among us to derive, based on academic results, the probability of success, or lack of it, of a young student. That this is a hugely flawed proposition is demonstrated by many examples and theories.
Entrepreneur magazine did a feature in 2015 on ‘9 Billionaires Who Didn't Graduate High School', and the list included legendaries like John D Rockefeller, Henry Ford and Richard Branson from the US; Spain's richest man Amancio Ortega; France's fifth richest Francois Pinault; the UK's Joe lewis. Forbes too reported once that, David H Murdock — and not many may be aware of this — is a truly self-made billionaire businessman who dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and worked at a gas station before being drafted into the Army in 1943. After the Second World War, Murdock bought his first business, a Detroit diner, and sold it several months later for a $700 profit. Now, after a lifetime of buying, building and selling, he's worth an estimated $2.9 billion, reported Forbes.
These examples by no means imply that one needs to drop out of school to become a billionaire, or successful. They instead serve to only indicate that the huge emphasis laid on examination results as a denominator of success may be fraught with severe risks. Many experts believe so.
Rod Bristow, president of UK Pearson, wrote in The Telegraph, london in June 2015, “Qualifications are a good proxy for the knowledge and skills that young people need. We should think of them as stepping-stones to a bright and successful future for those who achieve them. But they do not, and will never, completely define the sum total of what a good education ought to provide. Nor are they a binary predictor that someone will succeed or fail in life; ambition and aspiration backed by hard work are better predictors of success in life than any single result on one exam on one day.” He added, “That over-emphasis leads to a ‘pressure cooker environment’ with students finding it difficult to cope with the extraordinary levels of stress associated with taking examinations.”
Noted writer Malcolm Gladwell in his bestselling Outliers had proposed what he called the 10,000-hour rule, according to which success was an intense interplay of a variety of factors including practice and extraordinary opportunities that come along successful people. He proved this with elaborate examples, from The Beatles, Bill Joy and Bill Gates. He quoted neurologist Daniel levitin, “…ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything.”
The expectant parents may not like this proposition, though. In fact the over-emphasis is largely the result of a hugely aspirational new-age parents who somehow want to see their children compensate for their failures in life. Of course the social demonstration effect explained by an overtly curious bunch of neighbors and relatives too places undue pressure on children. They all must note this fine quote from Edward de Bono, “Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.”
As a society, we must resolve that results in one exam, or many exams, are just one tiny determinant of success or failure in a person's life. Success is, to borrow Steve Mueller, like an iceberg — some of it visible, while much of it remains underneath, hidden and heavy. Examination results are just a tiny tip of that colossal iceberg of success.
(The writer is a strategic communications professional)