Campaign for a life beyond grades

The article “A look at PSLE scores – to get parents to look beyond grades”, published in the Straits Time in the Education section (B9) on September 17^th, describes the Life Beyond Grades campaign that was recently launched in Singapore. It is a campaign initiated by a group of parents that hope to alleviate the pressure to get good grades that schools, and the society in general, put on their children. The author Theresa Tan highlights a few professionals supporting the campaign who have scored low on the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE)  and have succeeded in their professional lives. Note my intentional change of a “but” to “and” in that sentence. Apparently it is normal to think that academic success leads linearly to professional success, and that academic success is even a necessary requirement to succeed in life overall. This underlying belief can also be seen in the article’s subtitle: “Social media campaign features S’poreans who didn’t do well in exam  but have succeeded in life”. “But” succeeded in life? I laughed in disbelief at this one. Are you kidding me? Tell me if I’m wrong but I do think there are other ways to suceed in life that do not relate to grades. 

I find this quite shocking. First of all, the scores are from a primary school test. In my opinion, a primary school test should not and will not decide about a future career. Secondly, success in life is defined here very clearly as professional success. But isn’t there more to life than professional success? 

The pressure to get good grades and perform well is not an issue present only in Singapore. The number of students suffering from mental health problems, such as anxiety or depression, continues to increase throughout Europe. In Germany, for example, the number of young adults suffering from depression and panic attacks has risen considerably in the recent years. Factors like fear about the future and financial concerns can cause this trend. I also have the feeling that, like in Singapore, now also children in primary school suffer from the pressure to get good grades in order to attend a good secondary school. Some kids in the sport group I taught back home in Germany have mentioned the amount of stress they feel when having to study for their PSLE. Therefore, the launch of the Life Beyond Grades campaign is definitely a great step towards battling the academic pressure society imposes on children and young adults. However, I think it is also necessary to examine how such a demanding mindset was formed in society in the first place: how do people come to the conclusion that academic success equals overall success? 

Ironically, at the bottom of the page the newspaper features advertisements promoting counseling agencies that will help students apply to universities like Oxford International College and universities in Australia, labelled as “number 1” and “ambitious” and embellished with high success rates for pursuing medical and health degrees.