Next week, many of our chil­dren en­ter new sce­nar­ios in their school life. For some, it is a new aca­d­e­m­ic year in the same school while oth­ers are en­ter­ing en­tire­ly new phas­es in dif­fer­ent schools at high­er lev­els as they con­tin­ue their aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney.

Scan­ning Face­book last week, I no­ticed the con­tin­ued trend of con­grat­u­lat­ing those who com­plet­ed the CAPE with high suc­cess. There were fea­ture sto­ries, ho­n­our boards, stu­dents who got in­di­vid­ual com­men­da­tions by their schools, par­ents who cheered their chil­dren, and many oth­er ex­pres­sions, all heart­warm­ing.

I am for cel­e­brat­ing suc­cess but some­thing with­in is al­ways con­sid­er­ing how we treat with those who do not en­joy the de­fined high or high­est lev­els of suc­cess. My thoughts were al­so on how we pre­pare our chil­dren for each phase of their ed­u­ca­tion.

Hav­ing strug­gled to com­plete my sec­ondary school ed­u­ca­tion with the an­tic­i­pat­ed suc­cess and ho­n­ours of my time, and know­ing the emo­tions that must be nav­i­gat­ed, most­ly with­out a guid­ing voice to the in­ner tur­moil that comes with per­son­al dis­ap­point­ment, is what al­ways leads me back to this space.

The chil­dren who speak of their suc­cess­es speak of their ap­pli­ca­tion to their stud­ies and most­ly share the en­dur­ing com­mit­ment of their par­ents among the com­mu­ni­ty that up­held them. One sto­ry this year that was heart­en­ing was about the di­vorced par­ents, who, de­spite liv­ing great dis­tances from each oth­er, co­par­ent­ed with suf­fi­cient love and ci­vil­i­ty to see their child to her suc­cess. That sto­ry may be an ex­cep­tion.

Amidst the re­mark­able, pub­lished suc­cess sto­ries which high­light the best of the crop, some­thing in me trem­bles with dis­com­fort for how we cel­e­brate and what mes­sages we send to young peo­ple who com­plet­ed these ex­ams with re­sults com­men­su­rate with their abil­i­ty, ca­pa­bil­i­ty and ca­pac­i­ty.

I al­so do not re­call hav­ing any of the nar­ra­tives many stu­dents share about par­ents giv­ing life lessons for their jour­ney. My moth­er ex­pect­ed me to do well. I was sent to school in the 1970s with a “you-know-what-to-do” and a “you-bet­ter-do-it-well” bless­ing.

For my sec­ondary school ex­ams, I strug­gled to achieve suc­cess. My CXC sub­jects are on two cer­tifi­cates in dif­fer­ent years. The “full cer­tifi­cate” of five sub­jects of my time came with a third set of pass­es from an ex­ter­nal (Lon­don) ex­am­i­na­tion done pri­vate­ly at my par­ents’ ex­pense. And, for even more con­text, I wrote some of these ex­ams un­der psy­chi­atric care.

Maybe the lat­ter, a cul­mi­na­tion of ad­ver­si­ties (I grew up in rur­al and ab­ject pover­ty) and child­hood trau­ma, in­flu­enced my think­ing, be­cause I nev­er felt less suc­cess­ful than those who sat the ex­ams and got eight sub­jects in one sit­ting. I did feel deep en­vy and jeal­ousy, though, when the school high­light­ed the “achiev­ers.”

Much lat­er, I would grad­u­ate with mer­it in one mas­ter’s de­gree and dis­tinc­tion in an­oth­er that was in the field of med­i­cine, a lat­er-life switch to pub­lic health from the pre­vi­ous me­dia and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tra­jec­to­ry on which I spent most of my ear­ly work­ing life. This blos­som­ing came very, very late, as it does with many peo­ple.

My ear­li­er school life was in times that were sim­pler, when in­flu­ences were less in­tru­sive and ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion was more re­strict­ed.

For those very rea­sons, liv­ing in such an evolved world, I have many con­cerns about how we par­ent and guide our chil­dren at the be­gin­ning of each phase of their ed­u­ca­tion. And what we tell them at the end of each suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion.

How do we mea­sure suc­cess and how do we teach our chil­dren to as­sess their ac­com­plish­ments?

As an un­der­dog, I am al­ways think­ing about the un­der­dogs of the school sys­tem and how they are nur­tured. What nar­ra­tives do we have for the chil­dren who are in the ma­jor­i­ty, the ones who do not get high­light­ed in fea­ture sto­ries and school ho­n­our rolls?

Some­times, I hear of the par­ents’ dis­ap­point­ment with a child’s suc­cess— it just is not what was ex­pect­ed, or it does not look like the re­sults of their peers—and there is pres­sure brought to bear on that child rather than a cel­e­bra­tion of their achieve­ment.

Com­par­isons and the com­pet­i­tive­ness that dri­ves our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem will al­ways be a de­bil­i­tat­ing fac­tor on the psy­che of our chil­dren; the mea­sure­ments we use for suc­cess are skewed and in­ju­ri­ous. How we cel­e­brate is it­self prob­lem­at­ic, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause we do not seem to be able to tell the many suc­cess sto­ries that do not be­gin with “eight dis­tinc­tions” or “ten ones.”

I am ad­vo­cat­ing for those oth­er tri­umphs. But more so, my own mus­ings are to prompt us as par­ents and as a peo­ple to find oth­er ways to de­fine and cel­e­brate suc­cess.

More­over, is the thought that we—par­ents and the en­tire ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem—should give more con­sid­er­a­tion to prepar­ing the minds and men­tal well-be­ing of our chil­dren at every stage with ap­pro­pri­ate dis­cours­es on suc­cess that is not the sin­gle nar­ra­tive we con­tin­u­ous­ly use to high­light our de­f­i­n­i­tion of “high achiev­ers.”