Is academic success important for later in life? Recently, I came across a little video that aimed to highlight why parents should not put too much pressure into their children’s academic achievements. I think there was a worthy message coming across: Firstly, do not pressure your children to high academic achievement at the price of their self-esteem; also, be open to the possibility that they might have a vocation that doesn’t require them to stick to an academic path.
However, I found quite a few statements conflicting and worth discussing. The following are stills I got from said video, the original I saw is in Spanish so I translated the text).
Take the following examples:
True to an extent. It is highly doubtful that he will ever need to use integral and differential calculus; however, geometry, statistics and arithmetic are fundamentals that are useful in everyday life.
Unless he is in the whale hunting industry, I guess.
Wait a second. Just like in the case of the painter who doesn’t need mathematics, this is only true when talking about more advanced stuff. Sure, a musician or an athlete will have no use their career for understanding and applying the Michaelis-Menten equation or the nuances of quantum gravity and string theory.
However, a solid knowledge of the fundamentals of physics, chemistry and biology is needed. Failure to understand the basic principles about how the world around us and our own bodies work is how we end up with people who believe the Earth is flat, vaccines are evil and that you can cure cancer by drinking juice every morning.
Things like the main elements and molecules that conform the natural world and ourselves, the main physiological processes in our bodies, basic genetics, the pH scale and how it works, concepts like mass, acceleration, force, resistance, basic chemical reactions and how sound and optics work, for example, are concepts we should all be familiar with. In this case, knowledge is power and having a firm grasp of this could help us make better decisions that could impact our wellbeing and health, as well as discriminating between bogus information and accurate facts.
The same is true about history and politics: we need to learn some background knowledge so we get to understand why our society is the way it is, why certain systems do not work, how masses react to certain measures. There has been a lot of experimentation with tangible results that could help us understand our current situation and predict what might happen if we drift towards a similar status, why waste it instead of using it to make better decisions?
Note how the wording states "any other than excellent" when the actual grade the kid got was the lowest possible in the grading system, uhm...
The thing is, as a school-aged kid, learning and performing well in school is most of the times your only responsibility. Sure, there are kids that engage at a deeper level in extracurricular activities since an early age (playing an instrument, sports or martial arts, an artistic pursuit or family craft, for example), but I would venture to say they are a minority.
Most kids don’t spend their after-school hours acquiring and practicing a skill, but just playing or relaxing, typically watching too much TV and playing too many hours of videogames – and I should know, both my brother and I were like this.
Dealing with school work prepares you for adulthood, where you will also have to juggle multiple tasks and deal with tedious procedures – even if you end up having your dream job, you will still have to deal with stuff like taxes, bureaucracy, finances, insurance, contracts, etc.
It is very true that performing poorly in school does not necessarily mean that the child in question is intellectually subpar or incapable; some people just feel bored, are not provided with the right material for learning, or lack an inspiring and motivating environment that lets them understand why what is being thought to them is important – we all have been victims of crappy teachers who made their lessons confusing and unbearable.
Kids should not be put under pressure to obtain excellent grades all the time at the expense of their mental health, and should be made to understand that a low grade doesn’t mean they failed, only that they need to work on improving their weak points for the next time. No one is going to deny you a job because you got some D’s in middle school and occasionally flunked your Maths tests.
However, one could argue that grades are a reflection of certain personal qualities: responsibility, discipline, organizational skills, focus, perseverance, even resilience. These are all necessary qualities for achieving any degree of success in life.
Many people like to argue that there are plenty of examples of people who dropped out of high school or college and achieved great success (from Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to Jim Carrey and Connor McGregor), however, they seem to miss the point that one thing these people have in common is that they had the exact same qualities necessary for academic achievement, only they focused them somewhere else with such a laser focus and unrelenting perseverance that they achieved the extraordinary. Furthermore, there’s the survivor bias: we get to hear from these cases because they are inspiring and spectacular, but we don’t hear about the countless other dropouts who failed to achieve their dreams or just had to settle with a very modest and perhaps not very satisfying way of life.
Another thing that I don’t like about the statements in the video is that they seem to push the idea that learning is something that should be done strictly out of necessity and practicality. Love of knowledge or curiosity don’t seem to be taken into account at all, even though it is a basic component for human development and self-improvement.
The view of study and learning as a chore that should not be done unless necessary is a very damaging and limiting one. Do I need to know about cryptozoology, the history of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or the mystical experiences of holy men in the medieval era? Does 
My grandfather says that knowledge is never unnecessary, and since it doesn’t occupy any space, you can always carry it with you. Why limit ourselves to the quotidian and practical, then? Even more so, one never knows when something that at the time seems completely superfluous to know can become relevant later (like explained in the famous "Connecting the dots" speech from Steve Jobs at Standford University).
Cheers,
Irime
