The British suspicion of success continues to mystify me…
Setting up home in a new country has its challenges, but one of the delights is discovering the eccentricities and quirks of its people, which may not be obvious to the natives themselves.
After nearly two decades in Britain, there remain certain peculiarities that I find mystifying. Trainspotting, for instance. But I still struggle to understand the suspicion with which the British view success.
This Thursday, schoolleavers across the country will be collecting their A-level results and seeking entry to higher education. Britain’s educational institutions are admired across the world, yet I am often struck by the way in which those who do get there, and excel, are sometimes met with an unease that can be incomprehensible to outsiders. Highly soughtafter courses such as Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) at Oxford have become synonymous with political dishonesty because of their association with particular politicians.
The actress Miranda Richardson has spoken about Britain’s “sneering attitude to success”. As chairman of the judges of the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2013, she talked of how some writers are deemed to be too successful for further accolade, describing the attitude as: “You’ve already had too much, you can’t have any more. Go away and die now.”
Anything more than modest success seems to hurt British sensibilities. We love a story of hard work and struggle but if that leads to “too much” success, it makes people uncomfortable. JK Rowling was celebrated for her back story as a struggling single mother aspiring to become a published writer, but lately she has been dismissed as a “billionaire centralist” within some quarters.
Such is Britain’s discomfort with the notion of aiming high that the British Army reportedly only retained its “Be the Best” motto after an intervention from the Defence Secretary, who vetoed top officials’ plans to scrap the slogan on grounds that it was “elitist”.
What impact does this attitude have on our young people, I wonder. Might it explain why ethnic groups who are unencumbered by this aversion to success tend to do better in their A-level exams? Data published in 2017 showed that while the national average for the percentage of A-level students achieving three A grades or better was 13 per cent, the figure was 24 per cent for Chinese students. Work ethic, discipline and parental support all play an important role, but a healthy dose of encouragement to succeed in life is important.
It is essential for a civilised society to accommodate failure, but surely there’s a happy balance to be struck where a child is encouraged to aim high and savour her successes, without the fear of society sneering at her should she exceed the acceptable level of accomplishment.
Anything more than modest success seems to hurt British sensibilities