Is Valedictorian Enough to Succeed in Life?

In the modern world, especially in less developed countries, students are gauged and valued upon their school performance. This is ofttimes an unfair measure of the child’s worth where they are assessed on academic grades rather than potential and wit. This problem becomes even more pronounced when you realize that many of the students, though having a good grasp of a subject, cannot perform well in exams due to anxiety and fear.

Unsplash | A child’s worth is reduced to their performance in an annual exam

The Criteria for Higher Education

The bane of scoring higher grades does not only end in school. You may survive the years of prejudice you suffer at school for being a backbencher and a poor grade achiever, but your sentence does not end in middle school. You need good grades to enter high school, especially if you want to achieve a scholarship. If you are poor and are dreaming of attaining higher education, you must have excellent grades to make the mark for getting a scholarship offer.

Admission for higher school is granted based on your academic performance, which means you must be among the top 20% performers if you want to get to a college of your choice. Likewise, the first question you might get asked in the classroom first is how well you performed in the school and that roughly translates into what you scored in the paper.

Unsplash | Higher education is dependent on your previous grades

Even if you have a good sport profile and are an outstanding player in the field, you may only be able to score a 50% scholarship on this merit because the merit of utmost value remains academia.

The Change in Criteria

This picture is not absolute without taking into account the real world and its demands. When it comes to securing jobs and earning big in the real world, and achieving job satisfaction, the criteria for obtaining success changes drastically.

Applicants all go through a grueling test of wit and creativity through physical demonstration and interview. Here the scales get even, and a high scorer does not definitely score the job. In fact, as it turns out, medium achievers turn out to be more creative, hardworking, and persistent in their goals.

Unsplash | You cannot get through the screening process based on just intellect

Hence, it is time that we change the way we think about grades right from the school and release the undue pressure that is hurled on children.