Thought-in-progress: Success
What is success? A quick reflection on its mechanics.
The first major educational milestone for 12 year olds across Singapore has concluded for 2020 — the Primary School Leaving Education (PSLE) is over, and results were released on the 25th of November. Almost all of the Grade 6 students have made it on to Secondary Education, and indeed kudos for reaping the fruits of their effort over the years.
Yet, I can’t help but wonder back to a huge problem that we have in our education system — our students are very much stressed over schooling. A rudimentary Google search yields a substantial number of results of articles written about the stress that our schoolkids are facing. Here are just a few of them:
Singapore students suffer from high levels of anxiety: Study (Straits Times, 20 August 2017)
More teens in Singapore seeking help at IMH for school stress (Straits Times, 11 April 2019)
A commentary from ChannelNews Asia came out on the same day as the release of the results which I thought was an interesting article. The article essentially challenges the “Usual understanding of success” in Singapore and at the end of the day, her definition of success is whether she is happy with herself; One will streamline one’s scope to the self as a plumb line to understand all other subsequent perceptions, before examining other perceptions against the plumb line. What could be possible mechanics underlying success as a concept, in order for this “new plumb line” to be effective in our quest for success (following the Narrative or otherwise?)
Before that, it might be helpful to quickly explore the usual definitions that we hold here in this little Red Dot. In Singapore, we define success based on a few parameters:
- Educational smartness and scholarships galore from a young age (let’s call them “the elite/talent”)
- Achieving at least an undergraduate degree from a local university (“the standard path”)
- Being average/below average, from a lower socio-economic status, but one is able to “work their way up” the corporate/civil ladder and become successful — an entrepreneur, a high flyer in the corporate/government world, wealthy or famous, or at least two of the above (“the late bloomer”)
These ideals are our unofficial state narrative when it comes to education and “meritocracy” and growing up in Singapore, you would most likely have had your parents hounding you on this in some way, bombarded with “ten year series” (for those not from Singapore, these are stacks and stacks of examination papers over the past ten years on specific subjects, and “bumper packs” include preliminary/mock examination papers from “better” educational institutions) and tuition classes, and chock-a-block of strategies to “study better”, such as mind maps, study camps et cetera. Sleepless nights before examinations, teachers (coming from a good place I suppose) pushing you to study hard and be better. We have also come to internalize and tacitly accept these processes and definitions as “truths” of success.
As students, have we reached a point where we view studying as important insofar as to reach these goals? Have we explicitly linked education to studying, and studying only to formal education and qualifications (in pragmatism) — where we are more focused on the products of what we can think and remember, over the act of thinking and remembering itself?
Coincidentally, I’ve been spending sometime in the past week (in whatever free time I had) drafting a post about Metacognition, and seeing all these today made me pause and reflect a little. Social metacognition suggests that our understanding of our reality and framing comes from environmental factors — that we are nurtured to become who we are as a part of community. This includes how we perceive success as defined by community (at large) and the “right paths” to get there.
The success stories justifying the narratives are usually told to us as ideals for the common folk to work towards. That in itself is not problematic, but when we allow it to solely define us, then it might be an issue. This is also rather Orwellian in nature, but right down to the languages that we are accustomed to in processing and understanding any part of our reality, we are only as far reaching as the language of expression allows us to, and commonly shared ideals and narratives of success are no different in its operation within us.
I think back about my own educational journey within the Singaporean educational system and I’ve always been average/below-average according to my results. 224 for PSLE, 14 points for O Levels, caught in the gap for A Levels (4 A Level passes, but not “good enough” to enter a local university). I had my own fair share of “averageness”, disappointment and headache — failure felt like a part of my character, memorization felt hollow and forced without any possibility of understanding and the desire to give up began festering… all taking place before 16 years of age.
Even at that time, I was sure what I experienced was not unique to me, and it could be the common experience for many of my peers. I’ve then started questioning the state of our reality and how we perceive and accept it (either in resignation or without much thought) when I entered Junior College (17 years old), and I sought to understand how human beings actually learn, and the sociological, psychological, philosophical and ideological principles, machinations, perspectives that grip us and shape what we understand as reality. Understandably it was Pandora’s Box, and even after slightly more than a decade of reading (even currently pursuing post-graduate education on the subject), I have barely scratched the surface in understanding it.
The narrative.
Success according to the narratives, the talent, the standard path or the late bloomer, are heavily ingrained into the average Singaporean. Some of us strive for status — to climb the corporate ladder as fast as possible, and to become publicly known as a first-mover. Some of us strive for cash — talks of investments, stocks, property and other forays to build our financial portfolio. Some of us strive for stability and security, finding a mix of status, finances, relationships and other items. At a younger age, I used to idolize the narrative of success, before turning around and rejecting them. In recent years, however, I’ve reached a middle ground of appreciating the myriad definitions of success, yet I am also very cautious of being sucked into any one of them and having it overtake my being.
Much of the success of, well, success is dependent on how one views the route to that success, and if it is the “long and narrow path”, there will naturally be competition to get on said path. If we are ingrained into believing that “a degree will make us successful” then we will work our way there. If we believe that success starts from getting a good paying job as a fresh university graduate, then we will hold on to that perception and implicitly, could we possibly believe that we “deserve” success because we have worked our way there (a product of simplistic meritocracy)?
We cannot immediately solve the average stress level imposed on the next generation. It involves wholesale changes to many stakeholders that will understandably take time to move. The Ministry of Education (MOE) will be rolling out a new banding system for the PSLE starting from next year but critics have highlighted that it won’t change the stress levels that our students. I am feeling reservations on the new banding system as well, since the roots of the issue aren’t tackled. Your house will never be free from cockroaches by just changing the colour of your walls — you need to find the rot and remove it accordingly. Strategies have been popping up on “planning for the new PSLE banding” since it was announced a few years back, because the root of the issue just takes a different form; that is, we still understand success through the standard path: of getting into good schools, getting into a local university, getting a degree, getting a good paying job, if the talent path is not viable. If the standard path fails, we naturally tell ourselves to batten down the hatch and work hard, in order to build a good career for yourself.
While the scourge of the successful careers to be in (doctor, engineer, accountant, banker) is not as intense in recent years, the mentality still remains:
Study hard and get good results, to be successful.
For a moment, I will suspend my own convictions and accept that this is indeed success, and chunking up from this, success can be broadly defined as: Achieving X through these conditions: doing Y1, Y2… and I am contented with living when I meet Goal X. Success is more than just the narrative we have received when we were younger, and I believe we do need to examine ourselves and build our self-awareness into figuring out what success means to us, and how we can get there.
Having said that, however, I think the problem starts when everyone believes that they inherently deserve success before proving (to themselves at least) that they actually deserve it, both in terms of ability (which is easily understood) and in heart (which I think is usually neglected).
I define “heart” as (largely) the ability to have and store empathy, understanding of community and order. I have grappled with the heart issue for years, trying to make sense of the correct set of principles and postures that answers the question of “readiness of heart”. I am currently accepting that success attained purely from ability without consideration of others, community and others is possibly fragile, and it can all come down when your detractors, who aren’t envious but instead are victims of possible poor management, speak out to the people who will indeed influence your success regardless of whether you think these opinions affect you.
Both heart and ability are symbiotic — they need each other to exist, and success (no matter what the definition is) grows from there. The adage says that with great power comes great responsibility and success comes with responsibilities. If one is in that position of success, does he/she have the heart to steward their success, responsibilities, gains and lives under them effectively, with dignity and respect to others? One doesn’t learn that at their place of success but instead, as they move towards that place of success, based on their own definitions.
Don’t get me wrong, ability is still important. Skills can be trained but a lot more effort is needed to sharpen and make attitudes effective (for the self, for the community, in the workplace among other environments and roles). Would it be too unreasonable for the suggestion that a focus of the heart mechanic of success might prepare us better to be successful according to our definition? With an understanding of our mental, emotional and interpersonal capacities, we may be better positioned to plan a more effective route to improve our skills and ability, and invariably mature both our grit and capacity to persevere.
When I think of the importance of “heart”, I think of Sisyphus and his boulder, specifically where Zeus punished him to roll a boulder uphill for eternity. Even if Sisyphus got to the top, the boulder would roll off and he had to roll it again. We can have all the skill in the world to your success but without “heart”, how long can it really last, and what do you actually get out of it? The building of empathy, self-awareness, drive, grit, is not instantly built — it takes time, effort, and more often than not, facing up to who you were yesterday to find out who you are today, to paraphrase Alice’s response to the Caterpillar in Wonderland.
So what?
Perhaps this is what we can do to help our next generation — that their worth is not solely tagged to their grades, but as they do their best (note not being the best) in schools, they should also develop themselves in other areas, and that should be organic, unorganized, informal. I’m frightfully and painfully aware that this is not enough, but perhaps it is a start, and we teach our next generation to keep failures as events (and only events), and teach them how to grow and learn from failure. Perhaps, let’s try to teach them to be lifelong learners, and not intense “studiers”. Could we teach and show the next generation to understand and grow themselves, not just their regurgitation skills?
These are just a few questions I personally ask myself to grow this “heart” side of success which I found helpful for my own journey of growth:
What is one thing I can learn from my day today?
What is one thing I have learnt about myself?
How can I improve from my day today, for tomorrow?
What is one principle I can take away from a mistake I made today?
Who am I thankful for today?
What can I do for someone today?
I dare not say this approach towards success is solely the gospel truth, or that it will immediately solve stress. However I think we owe it to ourselves to try becoming better holistically.
Just a thought, a thought in progress.
