“To bind your values to achievement is a formula for suffering.” ~ Brad Bizjack
Children not only learn math, science and language in school. They also learn the feeling of success, failure means what they believe they are and sometimes whether they think they belong.
When I was in elementary school, my school introduced educational broadcasts. If there are four seventh graders, the highest achievers are placed in the first stream, then by the second, third, and fourth streams based on academic results.
On paper, it means perfection. Students will study with peers who have similar learning abilities, and teachers can tailor their teaching as needed.
There is only one catch: your place is never guaranteed. At the end of each exam period, the grades are checked and the students are changed accordingly.
You may find yourself promoted to the top broadcast or downgraded to another rank depending on your performance. It does not matter where you went in the last term. All exams are new judgments. The whole school knows who is in which class. If anyone comes back, you know. If anyone falls, you know it.
When the system was introduced, I found myself in the top stream.
Looking back, I suspect I was probably where I belonged at the time. But if I am completely honest, I also know that I spend almost all of my time. If I had been put in the second stream, I would have been better there to study. Instead, I live with the constant fear of slipping.
In my young mind, dropping to a second stream was not just about changing classes. There will be public failures. I was worried about disappointing my parents. I was worried about what my teacher would think. In addition, I was afraid of whispers from other students. The embarrassment felt unimaginable, so every exam became less about learning and more about survival.
That survival filled everything. The goal is not to understand the material anymore, but to pass the exam and keep your seat. If you walk into our classroom during breaks, you will find that most of us are sitting at our desks. Working at home means sacrificing valuable time that can be spent studying before the next exam.
Expectations extend beyond the classroom as well. There is an unspeakable insight among teachers: You are a bright student. You should be able to teach yourself to read first and understand the concept with a little explanation. Excellence is not simply expected. It is assumed.
Even then, there was something about the second stream that fascinated me. There are students out there who clearly have the ability to attend top classes, but they never do.
At the time, I could not understand. Why do not you want to be in the “best” class? Secretly, I envy them. They laugh more and more. They seem less burdened by constant pressure to express themselves.
Looking back, it almost feels like they have an unspeakable agreement among them: do not drop to the third stream, but do not move to the top stream as well. And if someone from the top slips down, do not make room for them to bring all the unnecessary pressure with them. Whether that covenant really exists or not now matters. As a kid, that’s a feeling.
As an adult, I wonder if they understand what I do not understand? Perhaps they instinctively acknowledge that all achievements come with the cost of care.
In the second stream, they can excel consistently. They have a place to breathe. They can enjoy their studies without the constant fear of losing the position they were striving for. Meanwhile, we in the top network have been living under various pressures. From the perspective of the rest of the school, we are students that everyone admires. However, in our classrooms many of us just try not to be the weakest students in the strongest group.
What makes this experience even more bizarre is that there really are two levels. For the rest of the school, I was the top class. In that classroom, I was often near the bottom. You can rank thirty-three out of one hundred and fifty students in an entire class, which by any reasonable measure is a good result, but still find yourself thirty-three out of forty-five students in the top stream.
Technically, you are the most capable student in the school. Feeling you have ‘Run out of gas’ emotionally. The teacher looks at your report and insists, “You can do better.” My parents expect more because I am in the top class. No one noticed that I was competing with the strongest students in the school.
It was my first experience finding that you can occupy one of the highest places in the system while feeling you are at the bottom of it. Looking back, I sometimes wonder when I took that lesson.
The other two streams occupy different places in my opinion. The third stream was almost invisible to me and I doubt it was for many of my classmates either. It was not part of my mental map. I never imagined falling so far, so I rarely think about it. However, the fourth stream stayed with me for a completely different reason.
Before studying, we all used to be classmates. Some of them used to be my tablemates. Some of you used to be my friends. We learned together without adding much meaning to where each of us stood to study. Looking back now, I always wonder how it feels to a child who suddenly finds himself the weakest student in school. I never thought to ask at that time. I wish I had.
Part of the reason I noticed the classes was because we were expected to help them from time to time. You will be paired with another student to explain concepts or work through exercises together.
Those moments were with me because their class felt different from ours. There are fewer students, which means that each child gets more attention from the teacher. The room seemed brighter, more colorful, and more tolerant.
Lessons shifted at a pace that allowed questions to be asked without embarrassment. From where I stood, it felt as if the students were allowed to say, “I do not understand,” or “Can you explain it again?”
In the peak current, those words feel almost unimaginable. We are bright students. We are expected to understand, continue, and to discover things for ourselves.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder if the greatest privilege in that school is not considered the smartest. It feels safe enough to confess when you are not around.
People always ask how to get to the top. Less asked how much it costs to stay there. Every promotion generates high expectations. Every successful business brings new responsibilities. Every public achievement attracts comparisons.
Success is not just about what you get. It often becomes something you have to take care of.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder if this is why the position of power, influence or “best” never appeals specifically to me. Over the years, I have interpreted it as a lack of ambition. Now I am not so sure.
Maybe somewhere, at about 11 years old, I started to stand together at the top for fear of falling. I do not know where that class started, but I can see how it turns out as I move through the world today.
That reflection also changed the way I think about self-realization. As children, we assumed that everyone was sitting for the same exam under the same conditions. We do not see classmates with home tutors, those who live ten minutes from school while another spends many hours traveling, or children with educated parents who can help with homework every evening.
We do not notice who has a quiet room to study, who has brothers or sisters to care for, or who is coming to school carrying a load we cannot see. We think rankings measure intelligence. Looking back, I think they measure even more.
There was another expense that I did not recognize until years later. Friendship rarely has a chance to grow because competition occupies a lot of space between us. Every exam has the potential to change where you sit, and every mark of others feels like it could be a loser.
No sense in telling you now – I don’t wanna ruin the suprise. Sometimes I wonder how many relationships are quietly sacrificed at the altar of achievement and which report card can be worth it.
Years later I met one of my former classmates at a culinary school. He used to be one of the brightest students in our class. Long before the study was published, I remembered that he was a boy who could draw beautifully.
He came from what in our young minds looked like a privilege. His parents took him from school in a car while most of us took the public bus. He bought lunch at school while many of us were carrying ours from home. By all means we understand that as a child he seems destined for a different future.
I went to culinary school because I was late for college and my parents encouraged me to spend the whole year doing something I enjoy. I love it every minute. The culinary school never felt like settling. It feels like an unexpected gift.
However, his situation is different. We never talked about them and I never asked. We exchanged joys, then continued with our day. I remember him smoking and drinking, but I do not know what that means in the context of his life. As I got older, I tried to be careful not to make mistakes.
Over the years, I have told myself that I feel ashamed of him. Now I am not so sure. Maybe what I really saw was my own misunderstanding. How could someone I supposed to be a doctor, an engineer, or an architect finish my same culinary class with me?
More importantly, why did it surprise me? Who taught me that children who are good at walking straight lines or some paths are more valuable than others? Perhaps another hidden lesson in those school years: We are not just taught how to achieve. We are also taught what success looks like.
The truth is, I do not know what he is. I do not know if cooking school was his first choice, his second chance, or just the way it meant at the time. I do not know if he was proud to be there, disappointed or completely satisfied. All I know is that he forced me to ask questions about things I had brought with me since childhood — stories about the talents, dynamics, and kind of life that people were expected to live.
Looking back now, I do not think this article is really about publishing studies. It is about how quiet childhood creates us. We leave school believing we have learned math, English and science, but we also apply the idea of success, failure, ownership and what kind of person we are allowed to be. Some of those lessons serve us. Others deserve questioning.
I do not know if that class is the reason I never chase after the title of influence or the highest chair at the table. We humans are rarely shaped by a single experience. But I know that when I look back I can see where my relationship with achievement began.
That understanding did not make me less ambitious. It made me more intentional. I stopped measuring my life against the definition of success that bothered me and started building one that allowed me to breathe.
Maybe that is a gift of reviewing our childhood – not to blame it for the adults we have become, but to understand them a little better.
About Mutoni Amran
Muthoni Amran believes that ordinary experience always has great lessons. Through KenyaonaShoestring.co.keShe explores the quiet assumptions that define our lives and invites readers to look at things that are a little different.
