As a kid, I just wanted to be seen for my effort even if it wasn’t the best. There was always someone better, smarter, and much more hard-working than I am. I think one thing that I wanted so badly was to be one of the top 3 students in class. They were the ones who others clapped for, and they were the ones whose pictures were hung on the administration wall for anyone passing by to see. The school organized a big ceremony for the top 3 students of each class, inviting their parents to school, and at the end, they all enjoyed the big buffet (I think that's why I wanted it the most lol).
The system drove me crazy. The way things are done just teaches students like me that if u aren’t one of the top 3 students in class then you did not “make it”. No one will clap for you. No one will thank you for trying. No one will believe in your potential despite the numbers or grades. While this is done to increase a “healthy kind of competition”, it's doing more harm than good.
Eventually, year after year kids, who don’t think the way their adult brains think, will start to believe and learn this all-or-nothing way of life. If I didn’t win the competition then I am a loser. If I didn’t get an A+ then I am not good enough. If I didn’t have a 4.0 GPA then who am I? And to top it off many kids go back home to hear things such as “You can do better” or “This isn’t good enough” from their parents.
I remember my whole life as a kid revolved around my education. I spent 5 days a week for 8 hours each day at school, doing Math, English, Arabic, Islamic studies, etc. There was nothing included in the curriculum for me to truly discover who I am. It is only normal for me and other kids as their lives revolved around school to make their education a price tag for their worth. This is what we are teaching kids. That their grades are much more important than their progress, learning, and even themselves.
It's done by shit like the whole class clapping for the person who got a 10/10. However, when it comes to someone who is really bad at math and hates it so much yet still manages to get a 6/10 is looked over, and the paper is handed to them folded as if there is something to be ashamed of. The fact that we teach our kids that trying is not good enough is absolutely disgusting.
Now it takes us years to unlearn what the system has taught us. We have to spend years trying to dismantle our own self-worth from our grades and education. It takes us now years to start believing that we are more than our report cards and what grade we got on our Math test. We spend years trying to unlearn what almost 14 years of school taught us about ourselves.
Lastly, every time I remember how every adult dealt with how I made a mistake when I was a kid, I just shake my head in disapproval. It was met with shouting, punishment, and shame. That’s just horrible. The lesson from this is that I am not allowed to make mistakes. Mistakes cant be done. But you grow up and you see that mistakes are inevitable and that they will teach you the best lessons. But now, every time you make one you feel like you murdered someone when actually you just forgot to do that assignment. It was a mistake that's all. The biggest impact of this system is that it doesn’t teach us how to deal with failure. It does quite the opposite. It punishes you harshly every time you make a mistake.
Let those kids make mistakes, and embrace them when they do. Let them think they might be great at painting, but after 2 weeks they are allowed to discover that it's not for them. Let them fail, and teach them how to stand back up instead of punishing them. Let them be HUMAN.
