“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.“
– Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Nobel laureate in Literature 1969
AH, how could I not enjoy school sports?
Little bundles of energy full of hope and potential bounce to and fro on the field, turning random Brownian motion into something shaped by the strange attractor of a simple football.
On the side are parents applauding the coordination of their loved ones.
Or shouting at the top of their lungs, pointing out every failure.
That’s how much we love them.
I went to a game the other day, and yes, I was one of those shouting on the sidelines.
I tried to yell praise more than admonishments because somebody pointed out that I have a lot to say when watching Real Madrid on the TV, and I say it loudly and sometimes while I’m on my knees, shouting at the heavens.
But one thing I have never done is what I saw last Thursday at a football game for 10-year-olds – a friendly between the Dwight Schools of New York and XCL American Academy in Singapore.
My boy, Hayek, wearing number 15, took to the field as a midfielder.
A parent named Greg shouted at Coach Johnson to stop a substitution.
The father said don’t take out this player, he’s good, leave him on.
Johnson, patiently, tried to explain his rotation plan, but the father then shouted at the child and told him to get back on the pitch.
I was tempted to step in.
But then I caught my wife’s eye – she was up in the bleachers, sitting with Bella and Mises, fixing me with that unmistakable hawk stare.
She mouthed something I couldn’t catch but the raised eyebrow and slow, deliberate finger wag said everything: “Don’t even think about it.”
So I folded my arms and shut my mouth for the rest of the match. Clapped when clapping was safe. Smiled when someone made a decent pass.
Every time Greg started up again, I just took a long sip of my coffee and pretended I didn’t know English.
The coach, under scrutiny and pressure, relented. It was an ugly scene.
As much as I disagree with football club managers around the world (some of them Champions League winners), I would make every effort to refrain from arguing with a coach or overruling one during a game, especially as a spectator.
But the truth is that Greg wasn’t completely wrong.
The player Johnson wanted to take off was one of the better players, and the substitutes on the bench were all there because they were deemed second-choice players.
I suppose if you wanted to maximise the chances of winning, then it follows that you should have the best players on the pitch.
Except, I put it to you, the objective of getting those schoolchildren to play the game was not to win.
Well, I guess for the children themselves, they were playing to win.
But the bigger point is that it wasn’t to win but to play well.
There is a big difference.
Yes, you should play to win but still keep in mind the long-term goals.
And those are about development, becoming both a better, more rounded player and a person at the same time.
Yet the instinct is to focus on the short-term.
It happens in day-to-day work life.
I remember managers would often talk about the importance of “low-hanging fruit” and “quick wins” for project implementation.
Early successes become the stepping stones for longer-term targets, while failures herald potential change and cancellations.
The truth is that humans are not good at evaluating their progress or the progress of a team they support.
It’s easy to interpret wins as successes, but how can you tell when a loss is an abject failure and when it’s a positive step toward success?
When I stepped into a leadership role, I approached the subject differently.
The truly uncommon ideas, the breakthroughs, the ways of seeing what others don’t, rarely come from conventional methods alone.
Because if you do what everyone else does, you’ll get what everyone else gets.
That’s why, from day one, I tell every new quant on my team: you’re here because this 156-year-old banking institution expects you to question convention, stop playing safe, reject complacency, and define the next frontier of the market with the full force of your talent.
If you’re not failing now and then, you’re either not aiming high enough or not doing it right.
Remember the maxim known as Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
In other words, if you think winning the next game matters, then the risk is that it becomes all that matters at the expense of everything else.
Goodhart’s Law has been evoked when explaining why it’s difficult to create performance measures for students and schools.
Many years ago, I asked the Education Ministry about scholarships given to children to study overseas: How did they select the recipients?
The gut instinct would be to say, the ones who get the best exam results.
However, what the data tells us is that quite a lot of those who get As across the board FAIL when they study overseas.
So exam results alone are not a good predictor of whether a child would succeed overseas.
I would point out that students from more well-to-do families are more likely to be comfortable with studying overseas, primarily because they are usually already fluent in English and also because they probably would have experienced travel abroad.
Consequently, you will extract the maximum value from them if they are selected.
However, they are also the ones already more likely to go and study abroad even without a scholarship.
There are more fundamental questions to be answered: What are you trying to get out of giving students scholarships?
Is it a reward for children who perform well in public examinations?
Is it so that children of poor families can get a good education?
(Side note: Some time ago, after a programme in Padawan, a few parents from less privileged backgrounds asked a US Embassy counsellor whether their children could realistically aspire to study math overseas, given their poor command of English. We assured them it was possible. Between the UK and the US, I recommended the latter – not merely out of bias, but because an Ivy League education often compels students to confront limitations they didn’t know they had and reimagine what once seemed impossible. For those raised in hardship, that disruption can be the most empowering part of all. One day, I’ll share more on why I believe the US offers something the UK doesn’t.)
Is it about a government striving to promote a skilled workforce in certain key industries?
Or is it to develop a stratum of highly educated Malaysians with a broad mindset as the nation strives to be more globalised?
Eventually, the criteria get boiled down, and for government scholarships, they unsurprisingly include considering the candidate’s income and bumiputera status (although the administrators at the time said it was one of the lower-ranking criteria. Nonsense?).
These are not wrong, but they’re not necessarily completely right either, and I think there isn’t enough discussion or transparency about how scholarships are given out.
But back to children’s football.
The main question we should be asking is: “Is this good for the kids?”
It’s all about putting in the time and effort to get good at the basics so they can have fun playing with their friends as a team and learn how to communicate and work together.
That parent who went off on the coach and the kids? They were like the total opposite of this idea. Instead of helping the kids grow and learn, their behaviour just messed things up.
What he didn’t realise was that it wasn’t about winning; it was about winning or losing together.
Anyway, we lost 2-3. Hayek was proud of his assist.
My wife was proud I hadn’t embarrassed the family.
I was proud too, mostly, for not getting us all banned from the league.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune. The writer can be reached at med.akilis@gmail.com
