JANUARY 16 — One of my cousins was pretty bad at school. Teachers used to make him stay back all the time.

Today? He runs about three businesses dealing with car repairs and owns half a dozen homes. 

Another distant cousin who was known in school only for his height now zips back and forth from Jakarta to his multi-gazillion dollar home in Glenmarie.

Almost everyone I can remember from my SEA Park secondary school class — not just the top-scorers — are now accomplished professionals, most of whom are based overseas.

Enough of my family and relatives. I have a church friend who barely scraped through his SPM. Today he’s a Chief Tech Officer for some insurance company. 

Another friend whom everyone feared would fail his IGCSE exams is now the managing editor of two online newspapers. 

An ex-student of mine, a Pakistani girl, who was always struggling in Year 8 History recently got a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering.

These stories go on and on. I strongly suspect you’d have quite a few of your own to tell. 

As in, you pick the top five or six people you know doing very well today — were they excellent students in school? Likewise, try to recall those friends of yours who celebrated each time they passed a subject in Form 4 or 5 — how many of them are “in the dumps” now? Chances are, they’re doing generally well and living normal lives, no?

The point is, the popular notion that performing very well academically (or the opposite) is a strong predictor of anything substantial in life and career is quasi-B.S (and this isn’t just my opinion, see note 1). 

Am I saying that academic results are completely irrelevant so maybe let’s scrap school entirely? Well, no. 

School is an essential part of our children’s formative years, so it simply wouldn’t be smart to abandon or dismiss it. 

It’s in school that much of our character is formed, our socialisation skills are birthed and our identities negotiated. 

For all its flaws, we can’t chuck aside formal education as an institution without a good replacement.

Nevertheless, we can ensure our children participate (and even excel) in school without “demanding” unrealistic grades from them. We can nurture the positive effects of schooling (eg, friendship, learning, etc.) whilst jettisoning the negatives (eg, academic pressure and comparison, report-card-as-identity-marker syndrome, etc.).

The future is opaque. Our predictive skills are terrible. Our children’s brains are still developing (all the way to 25 years and beyond) so their interests and skills may remain latent even long after they get their “golden key”.

With the advent of A.I. the situation is even more messed up and uncertain.

We simply do not know how our girl will think 20 years from now, so maybe we should lose the 24/7 helicopter parenting on homework and tuition and what-not? 

We simply do not know which areas our boy will develop an expertise for when he’s older, so maybe we needn’t go ballistic if he brings back a less-than-stellar report card?

We simply do not know what paths may open for our children once they learn to decide for themselves and begin interacting as adults, so maybe let’s quit comparing our kids with their cousins all the time?

Given how different our teenagers will develop and mature, maybe parents (especially Asian parents) need to learn to CHILL OUT when it comes to our kids’ school results.

As parents, perhaps we need more patience and understanding. We should focus less on micro-managing their academic performance and more on guidance, encouragement, imparting principles, warning against dangers, etc.

Give our children and young people space. In time, they will do us proud.

Note 1: See Borghans, L., Golsteyn, B. H., Heckman, J. J., & Humphries, J. E. (2016). What grades and achievement tests measure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(47), 13354-13359 and Kautz, T., Heckman, J. J., Diris, R., Ter Weel, B., & Borghans, L. (2014). Fostering and measuring skills: Improving cognitive and non-cognitive skills to promote lifetime success. 

As per the conclusion from Consensus.app (which aggregates academic papers on requested topics), “Academic excellence is a moderate but incomplete predictor of later success; cognitive skills matter, but personality, motivation, context, and opportunities add substantial extra predictive power.”

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.