Stop teaching children to base their worth on exam results

Right now, a parent somewhere is scrolling through an avalanche of messages in a parents’ WhatsApp group, fighting the overwhelming urge to cry as they watch fellow parents gloat over their children’s glowing performance in the recently announced KCSE exam results.

The messages, which often begin with the official ‘government names’ of the candidates, usually detail the earned grade per subject, not forgetting the aggregate grade, which in this case, in many WhatsApp groups, only features the As and A minus grades. When shared in WhatsApp groups, the messages are often accompanied by self-congratulatory messages from parents that goes like ‘Wow! Our son (xxxx) has done us proud!”

While parents of those children who have failed to get their As swiftly congratulate their fellow parents, when you take a deeper look, you will realise that beneath that veneer of delight lies a very bitter parent.

Of course, if you are reading this, you would never admit this, and you will probably go on a tirade on how your love for your child remains unshaken in the wake of rather dismal KCSE results, but you feel the pain. We know it hurts.

This is because we live in a country in which the worth of a child is has increasingly been attached to the grade they bring home after years of crunching books and cramming mathematical formulae. As a country, we have collectively normalised this national orgy of showcasing the best schools with the most As and pictures of achieving children hoisted high on the shoulders of their jubilant relatives.

Rarely will you find a parent whose child has scored a D plain share the news via the WhatsApp group. Even a C+ is considered a failing grade, unless of course your child has been a perennial D minus scorer.

It very sad that the pride of a Kenyan parent, it would appear, is no longer pegged on how respectful and wonderful their teenage child has turned out, but near solely dependent on that child earning the hallowed ‘A’ grade. It’s also sad that parents openly favour and throw parties for children who have done well in exams, much to the envy of their under-achieving siblings.

It gets worse in the age of social media. Facebook has become a cesspit of self-aggrandising messages and photos of the minors who are continually used as props to flatter their parents’ egos.

First it was the little boys and girls who had scored over 400 marks in KCPE. A week later, parents told us about the ‘national schools’ their children had been selected to join. Now it is KCSE. The blatant objectification of innocent children is a toxic cycle that will never end. In a country that is obsessed with grades, marks, academic excellence, degrees, papers and even the schools our children attend, it is no wonder children nearly kill themselves trying to score As or 400 marks because it has been drilled into us that we are as good as our grades.

I think sometimes this pressure is too much. Parents need to realise – and accept – that not all children are academically gifted. That it doesn’t say anything about you as a parent if your child scores an A. You won’t like that, but it is true. It does not make you better than those whose kids scored Ds and Es and it certainly does not make you a horrible mother if your son did not bring home an A.

The story we need to tell these so-called candidates is that there is life beyond these results. Because it is at this age that most of them experience their first real heartbreak when they fail to score the nearly elusive 450 marks. Parents need to appreciate whatever grade the candidate brings home and these teenagers need to be told the truth; grades are not life.

Children need to know early enough that scoring anything less than an A does not make them failures, the same way an A grade does not give one an express ticket to a successful life.

 And for those crestfallen candidates who may not have scored those famous grades, this is not the end of life. It may help that I end this with the wise words of Education CS George Magoha; “Everything that you do in life is important. Let nobody tell you that unless you get a job where you are putting on an Italian suit like me, then you are a failure. It is the person who thinks that you have failed who is a failure.”

Ms Chege is the director of the Innovation Centre at Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications;