Pursuing Excellence, Not Perfection 🏆
The Pursuit Of Perfection In Children
I’ve noticed that the thought of “excellence” (or “elite performance”) is eclipsing a number of the more traditional ideas regarding ability, vanity, creativity, and problem-solving. There are panels regarding it; there are articles regarding it, there are books regarding it.
New posters for display on classroom walls figure the word “excellence.” Say the word usually enough, of course, and it loses all meaning. Without one thing to anchor it—a series of definitions, a strong, outlined community, a club you'll get into, or a least a temporary tattoo to indicate that you’ve been initiated—how can we approach such a monumental concept?
We need to encourage each kid to know that they're the knowledgeable on who they are. After all, they are the ruling authorities on themselves—the remainder of us are simply amateur observers; they're the birds—we’re the bird-watchers.
They Are The Masters Of Themselves
Developing a way of mastery over their own complex, unmapped, and rising selves is not any simple task for our students. “Know thyself” has never been a straightforward assignment; it’s not, to Illustrate, like drawing turkeys by using your hand as a guide.
With pieces of themselves drawn from numerous places, it’s not stunning that youngsters appear progressively fragmented in their emotional lives, as well as in their faculty lives.
Pictures and expectations from tv, from music, from movies, from their immediate and extended families, from their outside activities, from their coaches, from their spiritual leaders, and, yes, from the handfuls of teachers they’ve had, strike them from all angles.
Guide Them In Their Pursuit
In fact they cower; of course, they hide. To inflict the burden of excellence upon children once we’re not even certain what "excellence" means may have a incomprehensible effect—like taking a "sleeping aid" that keeps you awake and jumpy all night.
Harnessing someone’s skills still means you’re putting them in a harness—that you expect them to pull some kind of weight. However a harness isn't something out of nature; it's a contrivance, a series of trappings, that inevitably end up domesticating and burdening the very creature that wears them.
“Excellence” shouldn’t be a burden; accomplishment shouldn’t be a rope around your neck or a weight around your ankle. Doing well ought to be a selection, a gift, a chance, and a pleasure.
