It’s exam results season and I’m a teenager again. Each summer, I feel the same residual throb of anxiety – the one that only comes when you’re waiting to find out if you remembered all your French participles and adequately described the repeal of the Corn Laws.
That said, back then I had the gift of an incredibly supportive family. In my grandmas’ case, this came with fierce, sometimes aggressive, loyalty. They were both Maureen “you-got-an-ology” Lipman on kosher steroids. I could have come home with an envelope stuffed with Fs, Us and personal abuse from the examiners and they’d still have cheered me like I’d won a Nobel Prize. But not everyone’s so lucky.
We all know the old joke about the Jewish mother at her son’s presidential inauguration. She turns to the woman next to her: “You see my son there, the president – well his brother’s a surgeon.” I suppose if you’ve spent the past few centuries telling your offspring to go into law or medicine, it’s not that surprising that doing well in exams becomes so consequential.
For some in the Jewish community, exam results are everything. There can be a total focus on grades, and that can lead to all sorts of harmful outcomes. On the one hand, there can be the extreme smuggery about success, with families schepping naches all over the place like exploding firehoses. It was something I often saw when I was growing up: parents competitively dropping A*-bombs during the kiddush – grandmas, up in the Ladies Gallery, rubbing top marks in each other’s faces. But it’s not just the excessive pride (though that can be bad enough). The flipside to all that extreme super-naches is shame. There’s the crushing communal “oy vey” when people don’t match up – a hundred raised eyebrows over the fish balls when someone doesn’t bring home a dozen As.
Of course I’m not saying that schepping naches is wrong, just so long as it’s done mindfully. Judaism is a religion that has learning at its heart and that’s a joyful, splendid thing. But for all the pleasure there can be in study, the endless hoop-jumping of exams and stress about results can bleach it out for ever.
I’m certain it’s also true of many different communities, but the weight of Jewish academic aspirations can be overwhelming. It often originates from a place of love, as parents think that these results genuinely are the key to a good life. But we do a disservice to our young people – and sometimes real emotional violence – when we place these extravagant expectations on their shoulders.
We have to remind ourselves that formal examinations aren’t everything and they’re not for everyone. During a varied career, I’ve had the extreme good fortune to meet many remarkable individuals from pretty much every occupation: law, entertainment, finance and the rest. Yes, some are garlanded with high honours but others barely have two GCSEs to rub together. With a handful of professional exceptions, exam success really isn’t a prerequisite to building a fulfilling and important career.
Instead of insisting on top grades, the starting point should always be calmly to ask our children what they really love, who they admire, what they want to do – and then decide whether exams are the only route to get there.
In fact, if they made me education secretary (I’m waiting by the phone, Keir), I’d introduce my own more useful qualifications. They’d be called Rinder-Levels and they’d value the skills that I actually do think shape lives.
The first R-level would be in sechel (“street smarts” or “common sense”). My beloved zaider always used to say, “You can’t teach sechel”, but I think you can certainly try to get a bit better at it. The second would be in emotional intelligence, that rare but perfect quality of being able to understand how feelings work (your own and other peoples), then respond to them appropriately.
The third would be in persistence, so deeply ingrained in us as Jews and the absolute heart of any true success. The fourth, and most important, R-level would be in kindness. Not to sound too syrupy but it really is the only thing that guarantees a happier life and a better world.
Anyone who gets A*s in these four – sechel, emotional intelligence, persistence and kindness – will do just fine, no matter what path in life they choose to follow.
I also give full permission to print your own R-level certificates and hang them on the wall. They’ll be well worth taking pride in.
