Ms Ruth Jans, Head of Mackay House
The culture of Brisbane Girls Grammar celebrates achievements in learning. Each year our extraordinary girls set academic goals and work to the best of their ability to achieve them. Many of these goals are focused on attaining a certain mark or, from the perspective of our Year 12 students, they may emphasise a certain OP score. The dedication and determination with which the girls apply themselves to their studies and co-curricular pursuits is often astonishing and certainly worthy of recognition. While not all of our students can achieve the top marks or the highest OP score, the fact remains that their efforts and achievements are just as worthy of celebration. In my efforts to understand how to remind all Grammar girls to celebrate their successes without comparing themselves to others, I turned to Wendy Mogel’s book The Blessing of a B Minus (2011). This article summarises some of Mogel’s salient points and their context to the School community.
It is hard work being a parent of a teenager. The dangers of the world are real: suddenly they are learning how to drive, going to parties, developing (often without fully understanding) virtual profiles that will follow them into adulthood, and their future studies and careers are not as far off in the distance as they were when they were in primary school. Now there is more at stake and the protective urge in parents is easily triggered. At an age when it is important to take a step back and give your teen space to learn about life, it is easy for parents to perceive this as a dereliction of their duties; however, ‘respectfully detaching’ (2011, p. 104) is crucial to your teen’s development and is a key point that Mogel makes in her book.
Girls Grammar’s aspiration ‘to be a leader in exceptional scholarship’ is an inspiration to both students and teachers; yet it can, perhaps, be narrowly misinterpreted to mean that ‘exceptional scholars’ are only those who achieve As or get OP 1s. This interpretation is incorrect and can cause problems for students and their families. Just as not all sprinters can run as fast as Usain Bolt, not every student can achieve top marks. Besides which, this is not the point of our aspiration. Rather we ‘look for the exceptional in who [our students] are and what [they] do — and build upon it — making the most of [their] talents, interests and assets’ (Bell, n.d.). This is what makes us an exceptional school.
Nonetheless, in a competitive world it is understandable why the idea of stepping back and not pushing for perfection can feel like the shirking of parental responsibilities, which is why Mogel’s book is so relevant. As a clinical psychologist, she explores how the passage of adolescence is necessarily painful due to the fact that teens need to separate from their parents, but she invites readers to recognise that this detachment is crucial and can be viewed in a positive light. She points out that there is, in fact, a real danger in being overprotective and putting too much pressure on adolescents. According to Mogel, it is possible for parents to change their perspectives on a long list of common complaints about adolescence and to see them as blessings in disguise — including your daughter getting a B minus. Each chapter of the book looks at different issues such as rudeness, materialism and carelessness.
The importance of a low academic score can be exaggerated and parents need to see it as an opportunity for their teen to learn some life lessons rather than as a sign of failure. The blessing of a B minus — if this is, in fact, perceived as a unsatisfactory mark — is that it can prompt your daughter to reflect on what went wrong: Did she work hard enough or was she lazy? Did she give herself enough time to work on the task or did she procrastinate? Did she access help if it was required or did she blindly persevere? Self-reflection such as this, especially when supported by parental advice, can encourage teens to ‘enlist the help of an adult’ (2011, p. 100) and, as Mogel correctly points out, teachers love it when their students take an interest and ask them for help.
The rhetoric at Girls Grammar often refers to raising independent young women in terms of self-advocacy, autonomy and accountability. We encourage and celebrate the progress we see from the early stages, where parents contact the School regarding their daughters’ concerns, to the point where the girls seek help from their Head of House and teachers on their own volition. To achieve this, the girls must start the process of separation from their parents and their parents must also accept the role they need to play in this process by detaching.
Mogel goes to some length to explain that, ‘detachment practiced properly is neither cold nor unloving. It doesn’t mean that you walk away from your parenting duties. Quite the opposite. Detachment is a balancing act that requires both compassion and contraction’ (2011, p. 7). When a parent contacts a teacher themselves rather than their daughter doing it, hires a tutor or even helps too much with an assignment (2011, p. 100), they can end up ‘robbing their teen of an opportunity to learn from natural consequences’ (2011, pp. 103–104). Of course, students and their particular learning needs are varied and complex and, therefore, require different approaches and levels of support, but it is important for parents to remember to ‘step back, think calmly and then respond’ (2011, p. 98) rather than trying to rush in and take action.
Another blessing of a B minus is that it provides teenagers with an opportunity to develop resilience. I must at this stage point out that, to many students, a B minus is an excellent mark — even a measure of success — after all, any mark above an official pass means that the student has met the assessment requirements. However, to others it can be perceived as a ‘failure’ or it can ring alarm bells for students and their parents aiming for an OP1. This is what leads Mogel to two key points explored in depth in her book: firstly, that disappointment is necessary in adolescence in order for teenagers to build resilience; and secondly, that there are much more accurate predictors of success in adulthood than grades in high school.
Parents should not try to shield their teens from experiencing the disappointment of a low result because this is actually ‘good suffering’ (2011, p.103) and helps prepare an adolescent to successfully face future challenges as an adult. Indeed, overprotecting teens from disappointments can cause negative results, which is discussed by Mogel in chapter 6: ‘The Blessing of Problems to Solve’. ‘College Deans use the code name ‘teacups’ for incoming students who are overprotected and fragile. When presented with a challenge, teacups don’t rise to it. They crack’ (2011, p. 95). Furthermore, when parents respond to a B minus as if it is a crisis, they are also conveying unintended messages such as: ‘the work is unbearable (no, it’s just unfamiliar); it’s too much for [her] (no, [she] is sufficiently capable); it’s so terribly important for [her] to do well on every single [assessment] that we can’t take any chances (no, it’s just one [assessment] out of many)’ (2011, p. 55).
These messages can undermine a teen’s potential to build self-confidence in their ability to overcome future challenges. For example, if as an adult they have a demanding boss, or need to work with problematic colleagues, or navigate an important yet complex relationship, they may not be able to find the inner strength to persevere and succeed if they never had a chance to discover this ability as a teenager (2011, p. 97). Concomitantly, if a parent can take a deep breath, step back and give their teenager the room to have a go at working things out, then the message this conveys is that they trust their child’s ability to problem solve (2011, p. 102).
The prevalence of our culture’s narrow definition of success, such as top marks or the highest OP, can result in more accurate predictors of adult success actually being overlooked. In chapter 2: ‘The Blessing of a Strange Fruit’, Mogel states that qualities of emotional intelligence contribute far more to happiness and success as an adult than high school results or even university degrees. These include: ‘empathy, optimism, flexibility, a good sense of humour, the capacity to function as a team member and a positive reaction to setbacks’ (2011, p. 24). Indeed, when teenagers feel that they are being constantly measured by society — their grades, their looks, their popularity — this can have serious effects on their wellbeing. Even students who constantly achieve high results can perceive this as a negative as they fear that they are only on top of things while they are academically successful; they can feel as though they are constantly walking on a tightrope where one false step will make them fall. You only need to turn on the television to hear this message reinforced — think MasterChef: ‘You’re only as good as the last thing you cooked’.
Living in a constant state of anxiety due to the pressures of striving to be perfect is obviously not healthy and can be avoided by reminding ourselves to celebrate the real successes of our teenagers. We need to recognise that when our students display personal development by setting realistic personal goals or PBs and achieving them, demonstrating maturity and resilience, behaving more compassionately towards those around them, and taking up the offers of further help from their teachers, these are the signs that they are successfully growing into young adults. At Girls Grammar, our focus remains on establishing our students’ love of life-wide learning; therefore, the measure of an OP in one sense becomes arbitrary — yet it is far too easy to lose sight of this.
Mogel clearly acknowledges that ‘accepting [our] children as they are — not tiny champions who are exceptional at everything, but gloriously ordinary’ (2011, p. 10) takes courage. And while intellectually we can understand and appreciate that adolescence is all about our children slowly separating themselves from us, their parents and guardians, it does not necessarily diminish our surprise at how much it hurts (2011, p. 16). I only hope that when my daughter reaches adolescence and starts slamming doors, rejecting my advice simply because I’m her mother, and experiences the disappointment of a low academic mark, I will remember to reach for Mogel’s The Blessing of a B Minus and understand that my ‘formerly cuddly, adoring toddler [has] begun the difficult work of separation’ (2011, p. 16) and is on her way to becoming an adult.
References
Bell, A. (n.d.). Scholarship: An old fashioned concept in a new fashioned world. Retrieved September 2013 from http://www.bggs.qld.edu.au/about/school-design/scholarship-an-old-fashioned-concept-in-a-new-fashioned-world/
Mogel, W. (2011). The blessing of a B minus: Using Jewish teachings to raise resilient teenagers. Sydney: Scribner.