Am I a Success?
Nov 8, 2024
We are preoccupied with success. We think about it constantly, plan for it, hunger for it, strive for it, mourn its absence, and envy those around us who have more of it than we do. With all of this focus on success, how might we define it? It somewhat depends on the parameters used and the task undertaken. At its most basic level, we might consider success to be the completion of a task. More broadly, it might be considered as the outcome of an undertaking. At a granular level, success may mean nothing more than starting a task and finishing it.
Of course, when we engage in the broader conversation about success in life, we are not talking about task completion or trivial outcomes; we are talking about ‘Success’, as in, “Am I a success?” The answer to this question varies hugely, depending on culture, context, aspiration, ambition, perspective, benchmarks, and any number of other highly subjective ways in which any of us may engage in the complex and often frustratingly opaque calculus surrounding personal success. One person’s success might be another’s failure.
Schools, of course, are right in the thick of this ‘success-oriented’ enterprise. From the ground up or the top down, schools are all about objective and subjective perceptions of success, as are our students almost from birth through to graduation and beyond. Schools are seen, perhaps quite rightly, as the engine room of success in life. A good education is seen as a prerequisite for success.
Starting at the admissions process, we make decisions about whether an applicant meets the criteria for enrolment, which offers a ‘binary’ measure of success (in or out). Each day, learning is assessed and symbols assigned to demonstrate the extent to which the learner undertaking a task met with success, as defined by the teacher, curriculum, school, or educational system. The assessment criteria informing these symbols of success (marks and grades) are adopted, deployed, moderated, reviewed, revised, analyzed, and modified over time, based on expertise, experience, need, expectation, and external elements. These external elements may impose statistical, financial, political, social, or cultural constraints and conditions on what success looks like.
For example, if every learner completes a task and receives a grade that indicates further improvement on the task undertaken is not possible, given the parameters of the test (full marks), some external stakeholders may assert that the test is invalid. This is based on the belief for some that all forms of assessment should produce a ‘range’ of outcomes from ‘perfect’ to ‘unsatisfactory’ that approximates the notorious ‘bell curve’. This phenomenon reflects the statistically common outcome that a so-called ‘valid’ test will produce a small number of excellent and poor outcomes, with the bulk of candidates achieving a result somewhere in the middle. Tests that produce results that are skewed either to the high or low end are viewed with suspicion that may or may not be warranted. Sometimes success has political connotations. If a government pursues a policy that guarantees success in improving educational outcomes, the cynics might suspect that one way of demonstrating success is to modify the criteria used to measure it. Whatever the lens adopted, there is always an element of selection, judgement, subjectivity, even an arbitrariness to these forms of measurement of success.
When considering school-related success, a further complication is the growing and unprecedented impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on learning. This is because when undertaking more ‘traditional’ assessments of learning conducted outside of direct human supervision, an underlying assumption is that the learner is not aided in any way: the test reflects what the learner can do. AI tools and platforms, however, may support or complete a task undertaken by a learner and at a level that is not a true reflection of the learner’s actual, unaided ability. Like any competitive or comparative task, anything that artificially augments the result achieved by one or a limited number of candidates or competitors, may be deemed to yield an unfair advantage or invalidate the test completely.
Suddenly, and perhaps unexpectedly, if we persist in traditional ways of measuring success in schools, we may find ourselves facing an AI ‘arms race’. This offers a rather unflattering comparison with the use of anabolic steroids to boost human performance in tests of strength, speed, and endurance in international competitions. The nature of assessment moves from what a learner can demonstrate naturally, to what AI augmentation a learner can access to complete a task. Those with greater access will achieve greater success. Accordingly, we certainly need to rethink how we measure success in schools. Banning AI at this point in history is unlikely to succeed; changing how we measure performance offers the best way forward.
Moving into higher education, the successful may find their way into prestigious tertiary institutions in preparation for eventual vocational success. The prevailing view is those who gain entry to the most selective institutions are more successful than those who do not. Acceptance is seen as a highly public marker of success. This is placing increasing pressure on the admissions process for the more prestigious tertiary institutions around the world, as the stakes have been raised considerably. Failure in this process is seen as a harbinger of failure in later life.
Beyond the field of education, how we perceive success is also undergoing a massive transformation. No longer is our field of vision limited to our circle of families, friends, colleagues, and what we might choose to read in the papers. We are immersed and enmeshed in a global ecosystem of comparison, usually negative. This is fueled by the relentless and ubiquitous sharing of success stories through social media, which trumpet the triumphs of individuals (both real and imagined) in pursuit of their dreams in life. It is not a difficult task to find evidence of how damaging this can be, when we find ourselves locked in a cycle of negative comparison, pitting the stunning successes of the rich and famous against our relatively modest wins and losses. Fame equals success.
In particular, how young people measure success is being heavily influenced by unrealistic, even unhealthy ideals. Social media confects perfect lives and images, carefully crafted and curated, that present the ideal to which all should aspire. Given time and life experience, these mirages shimmer and fade, as those with more mature judgement detect the quotidian reality underlying the glittering illusion. For those with less experience, however, this overwhelming barrage of sound, color, and light projects an irresistible fantasy masquerading as success. There are many studies now pointing to the serious impact on wellbeing and mental health posed by the negative social comparison phenomenon facilitated through social media. This is almost inescapable for those in their most formative years, as they search for their own adult identity and sense of self. To shine is to succeed.
We are also battling the commodification of success. This is where success can be bought (and sold) for a price. We can measure success according to the acquisition of certain material items and services that are expensive. Success, measured in this way, can be bought for the price of a prestigious car, home, watch, suit, bag, item of apparel, or whatever the market believes is desirable. One dimension of such commodification is scarcity. If something is scarce, it can attract a higher price, filtering out those with more modest means, allowing only the wealthy to own and display these trappings of material success. Homes in certain locations attract higher prices on the basis of scarcity. Likewise, artificial scarcity of products, sold in tightly controlled numbers, can generate hype and a perception of exclusivity. The cost of a production bears little resemblance to the price commanded in a market beholden to exclusivity. To own is to succeed.
A harsh reality is that success is increasingly determined not on our own terms, but by other factors, mostly beyond the control of the individual, and often shaped by distortions that produce highly skewed and unhealthy perceptions of success. While self-defined success is becoming more difficult, it is nonetheless a precious gift; it is personal, authentic, and life-affirming. It is not comparative. My success is not the same as yours. There is no reason why it should be. My sense of achievement in meeting or exceeding a goal that I set for myself should not be undermined or compromised by the goal set by someone else for themselves.
Ultimately, we need to set and ‘own’ our goals, not because of an online influencer (apparently there are more than 50 million at the time of writing), or a curated illusion, but because they are meaningful to us alone. When thinking of our children, the burden of trying to meet someone else’s expectations for success can be debilitating and demotivating. Just like personal experience, which we can only feel directly ourselves, the criteria for success in life must ultimately be determined by each of us. What is success for someone else may not be a good fit for me. It is a necessarily iterative process, with roadblocks, detours, dead ends, and delays. There are many points of reflection, review, and modification.
I believe we must regain control of this essential existential question: “Am I a success?” To paraphrase the famous philosopher René Descartes: you are if you think so.
Dr. Malcolm Pritchard
Head of School
