Beat The System.

Read an interesting article today in one of the local newspaper ("It's Hard To Beat The System" ~ A Writer's Life by Dina Zaman, Views, The Star) about how society placed too much recognition on academic achievements. Quite true. When I was still schooling, I remembered how we would compared each others academic achievements once the exam results were out. The straight As students would get endless praise whereas those on the opposite of the spectrum would get an earful from parents, teachers and...basically anyone else in the society. Does that mean he/she's a "failure"? I don't subscribed to that idea at all. I hate it when society penalised/pigeon holed kids who were not academically brilliant. Often, this sort of emphasis blighted the kids real talent and achievement, or worse still, became disillusioned and strayed into the dark side. They get "filtered" very early in life via the current education system, thus experiencing a differentiated environment. And worse still, in this country, for a a person to be successful, one must also have connections, looks or wealth, be at the right place at the right time (my current boss is a good example, clueless but have everything going right for him...).

In the above article it included Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, which to re-quote "...because we so profoundly personalise success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And, most of all, we become passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play - and by "we" I mean society - in determining who makes it and who doesn't."

For me, my hope is would be for my 2 precious to at least achieve a balanced academic standard with the right humanistic, social values and a contentful life...