Perfection Paralysis

This week Sarah Thomas considers why we shouldn't let a focus on perfection prevent us from doing our best.

I’ve been thinking recently about perfection. I think it’s true to say that I have, from my earliest years, known that whilst I would like everything to be neat and tidy and practically perfect in every respect (Mary Poppins being something of a role model of mine, closely followed by the wonderful Joan Hickson as Miss Marple), you can’t, in the immortal words of Mick Jagger, always get what you want. Indeed perfection can be paralysing.

It worries me that the notion of perfection is so prevalent in the media and elsewhere that it can be all too much for our children. Please don’t misinterpret me, I am absolutely clear that we should all aim to do our best. I’m rather thinking of the pursuit of perfect cleverness, perfect appearance, perfect lives. But it’s hard to do your best if you feel from the very start that there’s no way you can be as good as some seemingly perfect peer; or if you know that, despite your best efforts, you are unlikely to achieve as highly as your teachers or parents would like you to. And it’s hard too being the seemingly perfect one. That’s what I mean about perfection having a paralysing effect.

It’s why at Bryanston we focus so much upon how each pupil does according to their abilities and interests and efforts, as opposed to how they compare to others, either in or outside the school. In this age of league tables, where it seems everything, even the uncomparable, must be compared, ours is a radical approach. But the value we add by the sixth form in terms of both academic and other outcomes is something of which I am very proud, as I am of the achievements of Old Bryanstonians and the contributions they make to the wider world. I very much hope, for a multiplicity of reasons, no Bryanstonian thinks that the world owes them a living. And that they all go on to lead happy, fulfilled and contributive lives.

The way to deal with all this focus on perfection and the fear of helplessness in the face of it is, in my view, to remember your Voltaire (“le mieux est l’ennemi du bien”) and aim not for the perfect, but the good. This approach has a profound effect upon your sense of self-esteem: if you know what you are doing is your best, and that it is recognised as such rather than belittled, you are likely to feel much better about yourself. It allows you also to divest yourself of the feeling of desperation or helplessness that can creep in, often from consulting social media or the popular press about the world at large.

We live, perhaps sadly but certainly bracingly, in interesting times. I think our job as educators is to recognise and react to the changing world, ensuring pupils leave ready to embrace the new opportunities that will open up (so, for instance, we are strengthening our computer science provision with a new high-level appointment from September 2018), but also maintaining the framework which has proven its worth over generations, in terms of teaching pupils how to learn and, as it happens, how to be positive.

At Bryanston, I see this philosophy in action every day, through our remarkable tutorial system. I see it also in the approach of our Director of Sport and the exciting new developments he has introduced, so that all can enjoy sport both in and beyond school. I see it in the exceptional music and drama (and if you didn’t see My Fair Lady, I am very sorry for you, as you missed an enormous treat: I saw it twice!). I see it on every occasion that we place our trust in our pupils to rise to the challenges that face them. I am enormously proud, for instance, of our First XV Captain, Ellis B (P, A2), who has shaped a team which lost more than they would have wished before half term into one which was unbeaten this side of half term until, agonisingly, their very last game. Because of that experience, the boys now form a fully committed team with a sense of common purpose and individual drive. And Ellis is to be congratulated for his major part in that and also for his very recent selection to the U18 Wales squad. I am proud too of how the whole school rose this term to the challenge of raising our annual amount of £1,000 per house (which would mean a school total of £12,000), to support our long-standing school link with charities in Nepal. The total currently stands at £17,000 and rising. And I was beyond proud to hear of how our money raised for the fantastic David Nott Foundation (the charity chosen by last year’s A2 in spring 2017) has been helping fund training courses for surgeons around the world and has specifically helped in Bangladesh, supporting doctors treating the Rohingya Muslim refugees fleeing, often with cruel injuries, from ethnic violence in Myanmar.

This year’s Heads of School, Harry G and Lotte T, are now planning for the A2 Charity Weekend for next term. They’ll be in touch with pupils, staff and parents early next term and they are eager to make sure they lead another successful and contributive charity event in February. They also, incidentally, provide me with some of the best conversations of my week and are outstanding role models to the school.

It’s a privilege running a school like Bryanston. My main role is to ensure that all pupils can leave here ready for this world of ours, whatever shape it will take, and knowing that doing your best, in the classroom or outside it, is always good enough and can sometimes be absolutely brilliant. And that’s the way to stay sane, avoid perfection paralysis and enjoy life with all its ups and downs. Have a super Christmas and all best wishes for 2018.

Creativity unconfined

At the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference last week, Tim Hands, the chairman, spoke in masterly terms about the need for love in a school; schools are after all where we educate those who will shape our future. I happen to agree that love is a prime ingredient for a school as it is the most creative of emotions. And what is a school if not a Petri dish full of interesting organisms working out all kinds of useful symbiosis?

The Greeks knew a thing or two about creativity, from the pure thought of a philosopher (Diogenes in his barrel) to the geometry of Eratosthenes computing the circumference of the earth before the days of computers. The only ‘digital’ help he had was from his own fingers! The flourishing of thinking in the fifth century BC in art and drama, science and much else was in my day termed an ‘intellectual revolution’. The men of fifth-century Athens, and before them of Ionia, through their creativity of mind, re-thought our world. 

Megan Kilmister: Mixed media

So why do we fall for the argument that learning such as this is ‘to be assessed’ and done so  ‘summatively’? That it is easily packaged together? Any scientist worth their salt will tell you that creativity is essential to scientific progress, as without the ability to visualise that which could be, there would be no new discoveries. Is it because, in a time where education is dominated by government initiatives (there’s an oxymoron I suspect), the language used of learning is all about grades and league tables and floor targets; where ‘good’ is not good enough and only ‘outstanding’ will do? Is this why we tend to the parcelling up of bite-sized chunks of old knowledge and passing them on to children in order that they satisfy a measurement?

Quentin Martin: Rotating coffee table

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts”, to quote an American politician who came up the hard way. And of course I accept that children need to know certain things. But not at the expense of their learning to do, learning to create, learning to question pretty much everything, no matter how tiresome that is to those of us who are now antiques. As the great philosopher Karl Popper once said, “Every discovery contains an ‘irrational element’ or creative intuition”, and children need to be capable of breaking new ground. They need to be unafraid of any government’s twelve-inch ruler or league table.

If there is one other thing alongside love which to my mind makes for a proper school it is an enquiring mind from those who teach and those who learn. Then there can begin that creative, energetic, explosive act of learning, whether in the chemistry lab or the classics classroom, to pick two of my favourite subjects. Let creativity be unconfined!

The third edition of Nova, Bryanston’s anthology of creative work from the past academic year, was published this week. Click here to read the publication online.