From the Middle and High School Principal

 Excellence

Of all our values, the one that I feel I need to be most careful around is excellence.  All of our values can be damaging if over done - even community, the most benign, if taken to an extreme becomes exclusive and prejudiced against 'outsiders'.  But excellence takes even more care than the others.

For many years schools were exclusive places, whose ultimate job was to weed people out of education and into factories and manual work at key 'decision gates' at 11 or 16, and elevate the 5% that went to university into a comfortable middle class life for the next 50 years.  This was often done in the name of 'academic excellence' and its tools were 'rank and select' exams.  

Likewise, the phrase 'comparison in the thief of joy' is unfortunately profoundly true.  If you want to see how comparison and inequity make people, or even monkeys unhappy, you will enjoy this video.

So it's hard to say that it's a great idea to point out to a student they have 'gone beyond' their peers.  Carol Dweck's research on Mindset (not uncontroversial) shows prizes and praise not only damage those forced to endure being told they are not good enough, but equally those who are praised, who can develop a fixed mindset and become very fragile about taking risks or risking learning new things as a result of being told they are 'excellent'.  They simply have too much to lose if they risk failure, as their ego liked being told they were excellent.  (The answer is to focus on process and effort in her view, which I largely share).

But... and it is a significant but.  The joys of human achievement are hard to match.  The intense beauty of a well played chess game or tennis stroke; the artistry of the master dancer; the ingenuity and creativity of the talented mathematician are things of wonder and delight.  

This week I have been told of not one, not two, but three of our students reaching or competing at the highest levels of the Olympiad competitions for mathematics and economics.  Two gold Olympiads indeed in maths, and with selection to the next round of competition for one of them.   One student competing at National Level again in two disciplines having won two medals last year.  Grade 8 musical achievements in Middle School.  Computer coders coming in at the top of their Oxford University Computer Challenge cohort.

I remember coming 'top' of my year for a subject when I was at school and talking to my Grandfather.  His comment was essentially, 'that does not matter.  There is only one competition that matters, and it is the competition against yourself, to be the best you can be'.  With this mindset, we take away the ego and misery of comparison, and fully embrace the joy of seeing young people become more than they were, and discover themselves.  In the words of one of my favourite educators:

“There is more to us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps for the rest of our lives we will be unwilling to settle for less.” — Kurt Hahn.

On that basis, I can live with the idea of excellence.  In fact, I would find life less wonderful, less interesting and human life less rewarding for all of us without it.