There are basically two ways of defining school success. One can have high grades or a set of diverse achievements. Which is better? This is not a trivial question if we want to prepare a child for every challenge life is going to present. Let us consider the options.
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My own childhood experience
When I was a kid, I was expected to have good grades. My parents literally set zero other expectations for me. There was no limitation for good grades, and it was implied that only a perfect score is acceptable. Moreover, to be consistently successful I was pressed hard to get good scores in all of my exams of any kind. Being a child I complied and got consistently good scores through my school, first degree, and PhD. Once I got my Ph.D. I felt lost since there was no score for a good life, and my academic career felt quite boring. So when I had my own children I set somewhat different expectations.
Schools are not set to benefit the child
One would expect schools to prepare our kids for a better life: a satisfying job, high income, happy family life, and healthy habits. If this was the case, we would spend our time at school learning very different things. While some math is required in modern life, I seriously doubt that the math we learn at school is necessary or satisfactory. Yet the humanitarian subjects are totally inadequate.
If schools were built for children, probably we would spend more time learning speedreading and memory techniques, further practicing debates and creativity. We would definitely learn economics and programming very early in our curriculum. History and literature would probably wait until we became teenagers capable of appreciating the choices made by cultures and leaders. Sports would focus on healthy habits, rather than competitive games and running in small circles.
Schools are not made for children but for the states. The grades are set up to filter out good students vs struggling students, focusing both on the path that is most suited for the relevant skillset. This way, once a student graduates he is more likely to feel that the chosen path is anything but random. Then if the patriotic duty calls, the student will be motivated to serve his country. And the discipline is critical. It is OK to ask questions, as long as the answers comply with the state doctrine. Schools are fine-tuned for subtle indoctrination, less subtle if the state is a dictatorship.
The Japanese way vs the American way in school
Once we see that schools are set up to filter people inclined to do academic job vs those more suited for hands-on activities, the Japanese school system becomes very appealing. Japanese schools are known for notoriously hard learning. Once a child graduates, everything changes. Those who learned hard in school and got good grades can pretty much relax in the university. The others work hard to acquire a profession and can relax only after becoming proficient in what they do.
American schools do not focus so much on learning skills and discipline. Good universities are ridiculously expensive. Admittance is often guided by extracurricular activities. Overachievers combine near-perfect scores, participation in some musical class or semi-professional athletic achievements qualifying for the university’s team, and something “special”. Nobody actually defines this “special” element, but usually, it involves some volunteer work or unique experience. Once the person gets into a good university, the study is hard since the student needs to learn not just his profession, but also many things his Japanese peer learn significantly earlier.
The ridiculous thing in both schooling systems is the high burnout rate. By the time a Japanese kid successfully completes high school or an American kid completes University, there is a very high chance of burnout and loss of motivation.
The Chinese and the English way of hiring
Then after the University, there are again two very different ways of finding a job. Interestingly, both are equally effective or ineffective.
The traditional Chinese way focuses on grades. It is essentially a meritocracy. The person with better grades gets a better job. The person may have very little inclination or preparation for a public job, but if the grades are sufficiently high the person gets a junior position in government, and if the grades are slightly lower the person gets a position in a huge corporation. Those who want to move up the career ladder need to pass further exams.
The traditional English way focuses on social skills. It is very effective in a country with aristocracy. To get a good job, you need to impress someone in your school, be it your friends or teachers. Then that person provides you with a recommendation letter to some decision maker. And from that point the career path is open. Career progress requires a lot of social activity getting the approval of the right decision-makers and many recommendation letters. Curiously, only some grades matter, those that ensure the right recommendation. Some very effective leaders and professionals are not sufficiently nice to the right people to get a recommendation letter and this can ruin a career.
The right skills
While all of the selection criteria applied by the society are interesting, they were developed in a very different society. Today we spend significantly more time online, and yet teamwork is crucial in any activity. More often than not the knowledge required to do our jobs is not taught in any university, and it is incomplete without the contribution of our peers.
Hence the right focus would be on independent learning and cooperation, rather than learning with a teacher and competition. Even a basic understanding of economics and psychology is arguably more important than learning classical texts. Creative activities like arts and music should probably be optional and sponsored by the state.
And yet this does not happen. Moreover, formal education is so inadequate that almost everyone needs private tutors to succeed – be it a family member or a paid professional.
The teachers are inadequate
Why no school will teach you speedreading and memory techniques? Because there are no teachers for these subjects. Teachers finish specific academic faculties and work with the curriculum. Quite often teachers become teachers because this is a calling. Yet more often they simply fail in their other activities. While in some super expensive private schools, teachers are so respected, that they get adequate salaries and a PhD degree, such positions are extremely rare.
Quite often young people acquire an impractical degree, hoping to continue with MBA, a medical or a legal education. Once they understand that the lucrative career path is not available, they switch to teaching as a contingency plan. They are assigned a book they need to teach and a set of exams their students will need to pass. All they have to do is ensure that the students get reasonable grades and avoid violence. Both tasks are very hard and do not allow for anything more useful. Great teachers somehow play the system and manage to introduce functional skills despite the limitations. And yet for most of us, the formal schools need to be supplemented by a combo of homeschooling, tutors, and extracurricular activities.
Why do normal kids suffer burnout?
To make things worse, kids are not taught to study efficiently or to organize their schedules productively. Instead of learning subjects the right way, through homework and creative assignments, the kids do everything else and recall to study the day before an exam. Creative assignments are done by slightly bewildered parents, and group homework is an exercise in procrastination.
As a result, kids get a lot of free time. Good parents will not allow a child to fill their free time with social media, tv, and video games. They will introduce tutors, music classes, athletic activities, and so on. The extracurricular activities will eventually require all the available free time. Then the child is likely to lose motivation and get bored. Any significant success will increase the level of challenge. Any significant failure will replace well-known evil with something new and evil in some other ways.
And then between the activities suddenly there is a surge of homework in multiple subjects, or a large project to submit, or an exam to prepare for. There are no buffers to handle these challenges and the stress mounts.
A way out
To my own kids, I offer a different path. First of all, I provide memory techniques when they are 10 years old and speedreading when they are 14 years old. This way if they need to handle homework they will do it effectively. Next, I reduce the extracurricular activity to the level that they have at least 3 spare days per week – to do whatever they want. At that time I try to add some research on economy and psychology, typically reframing it as “learn how the money works” and “understand how people are programmed”.
Then every child is different, and these differences should be respected. Of my three kids, only my second child is truly interested in collecting general knowledge, only my first child is truly interested in hacking productivity, and only my third child is skilled in politics. So what? Their motivation is intrinsic. They are good human beings. Their grades are imperfect but sufficiently high for everything they want to achieve.
If the game is rigged, quite possibly it is best to play a different game. We could allow our kids to play their own game rather than the game dictated by the society.
