It is a God-given privilege.
Take time to be friendly
It is the road to happiness
Take time to give
It is too short a day to be selfish
Take time to work
It is the price of success.
I used to speak to motivate the youths when I
was a Rotarian in Ba and I started off one of
my seminars by holding up a $100 note. In
the room of some 200 people, I asked, "Who
would like this $100 note?" Hands started
going up.
I said, "I am going to give this $100 note to
one of you but first let me do this." I proceeded
to crumple the note up. I then asked, "Who
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still wants it?" Still the hands were up in the
air.
"Well," I replied, "What if I do this?" And I
dropped it on the ground and pretended to
grind it on the floor with my shoe. I picked it
up,. Now the $100 note was all rumpled and
dirty. "Now who still wants it?". Still the hands
went into the air.
"My friends, you have all learned a very
valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the
money, you still wanted it because it did not
decrease in value. It was still worth $100.
Many times in our lives, we are dropped,
crumpled, and grounded onto the dirt by the
decisions we make and the circumstances that
come our way. We feel as though we were
worthless. But no matter what has happened
or what will happen, you will never lose your
value.
You are special. Do not ever forget it.” I told
the participants of the seminar. I then added
these remarks to conclude my speech:
“Never
let
yesterday’s
disappointments
overshadow tomorrow’s dreams because life is
the most precious asset we have.”
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We all have choices in life each and every day.
To Be Kind & Considerate
To Love God & Your People
To Pray for World Peace
To Be Grateful for Your Life
To Be Excited & Inspired to do Good
To Be Thankful for What You Have
To Be Happy and Make Others Happy
To Serve Without Expecting Rewards
To Live in Good Health & Let others Live
To Work Hard, Stay Humble & Smile Often
To Keep Honest & Stay Loyal
To Travel Widely & Keep Learning
&
DO NOT WORRY.
My Way
I was born poor without any clothes but I am
sure I will go from this world richly wrapped in
robes. I also know that I was born poor
without any wealth and belongings but I know
it would not be my fault if I depart from this
universe without accumulating anything.
However, I would not take anything with me
except my richness of truth, beauty and
goodness that I helped to propagate and
spread in the community.
I made my family; friends and colleagues think
big, think fast, think freely and think well
ahead. Above all I did the same and I always
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knew that good Ideas have never been the
monopoly of anyone. I valued the ideas that
worked for me and that gave me contentment
and reasonable success.
I always tried to pursue all my goals the very
best way I could even in the face of difficulties,
and I endeavoured to convert all my
adversities into opportunities.
Challenge negative forces with hope, self-
confidence and conviction. I believe that
ambition and initiative will ultimately
triumph.
1. Between my past, the present and the
future, there is one common factor:
Relationship and Trust. This is the
foundation of our growth.
2. If you work with determination and with
perfection, success will follow.
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The Power of
Expectation
I have always felt that nobody would ever be
able to rise above the normal life if they live
with low expectations. As seen from my above
presentations that success in most fields of
endeavour depends on an ability to visualise
success. It has long been known that elite
athletes mentally rehearse each performance
prior to its execution.
Advances in neuroscience show why this may
be so important: the neurological processes
involved in visualising a performance are
almost identical to those involved in the
performance itself. Indeed, simply watching
somebody else perform activates ‘mirror’
neurons in the observer paralleling neuronal
activity in the performer. The ability to
visualise success and an accompanying belief
that success is possible appear to be
prerequisites for most forms of human
achievement.
It also is clear that the development of self-
efficacy is strongly influenced by the attitudes
and beliefs of others. In schools, high
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achievement tends to be correlated with high
parental and cultural expectations. Parents, in
particular, are powerful inculcators of values
and aspirations. Highly influential teachers
also are commonly described as individuals
who communicate a ‘belief’ in their students
and who build self-confidence through high
expectations. However, just as some students
live up to high expectations, so others live
down to the low expectations held for them. In
education, low expectations are the equivalent
of bone pointing; all too often they become
self-fulfilling prophecies.
Not surprisingly, students develop differing
beliefs about their own abilities to learn. Some
students appear to view ability as ‘fixed’ and
something over which they have little control.
Students who believe they have low fixed
abilities tend to believe that effort will make no
difference. Those who believe they have high
abilities often underestimate the importance of
effort.
On the other hand, students with an
‘incremental’ view of ability have a deep belief
that success is related to effort. Rather than
interpreting past failures as indicators of a
lack of ability, these students are more likely
to explain failure in terms of a lack of
effort. Interestingly, research has identified
cultural differences in these beliefs. East
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Asian students tend to have more incremental
views of their abilities than students of
European origin.
Given its importance to ongoing learning and
achievement, few outcomes of schooling are
more important than the development of a
belief in one’s own capacity to learn. Because
teachers and schools are in powerful positions
to shape this belief – both positively and
negatively – vigilance is required to ensure
that
educational
practices
do
not
unintentionally
communicate
and
institutionalise low expectations of some
learners.
One way in which educational practices can
institutionalise low expectations is by treating
excellence as a limited resource. There is
general acceptance in society that not
everybody can excel. Not everybody can be an
Olympic athlete, just as not everybody can be
tall. Indeed, if to ‘excel’ means to stand out
from the crowd, then by definition, only some
can excel. By analogy, it is argued, not
everybody can (or even should) achieve
excellence in the learning of mathematics or
languages or science. Excellence in school
achievement is a scarce resource available to
only a few.
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It seems likely that this deeply seated belief is
driven in part by notions of intelligence.
Beginning with Francis Galton in the mid-
nineteenth century, it became common to
identify and label varying levels of human
intelligence, with each level representing an IQ
range and a percentage of the population
under the normal (bell) curve. A small
percentage of ‘geniuses’ were at one extreme
and small percentage of ‘imbeciles’ and ‘idiots’
were at the other end. It was a small step from
concluding that high intelligence was scarce to
expecting excellence in school achievement
also to be scarce.
One of the clearest illustrations of the
rationing of excellence is the process known as
‘grading on the curve’. Under this process, the
percentage of students achieving each
available
performance
grade
is
pre-
determined. For example, a decision might be
made ahead of time to award the top ten
per cent of students an ‘A’, and the next 15
per cent of students a ‘B’, regardless of their
absolute levels of achievement.
This practice, common in some higher
education institutions, is intended to counter
the possibility of ‘grade inflation’ (that is, an
increasing percentage of students being
awarded high grades with no accompanying
increase in absolute levels of achievement).
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The rationing of top grades to fixed
percentages of students sends a clear message
that excellence in educational achievement is
expected of only a few. There are many other,
more subtle, ways in which educational
institutions communicate the same message.
However, educational achievement is not pre-
determined in the way that attributes such as
height are pre-determined. Achievement is
strongly influenced by the quality of teaching,
parental support and expectations, and
student effort. Educational achievement also
is not a competition with limited spoils for the
winners. Just as levels of health, wealth and
educational participation have increased in
the general population over time, there is no
reason why the percentage of students
achieving excellence also should not increase.
In reality, there appears to have been a decline
in absolute levels of performance in subjects
such as mathematics and science in Australia
over the past two decades.
The possibility of significantly larger numbers
of students achieving excellence is made clear
in international studies such as the Trends in
International Mathematics and Science Study
(TIMSS) and the OECD’s Programme for
International Student Assessment (PISA). In
reading, mathematics and science, between 10
and 15 per cent of Australian students
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perform at ‘advanced’ international levels.
Under the belief that excellence is a scarce
resource, this percentage of advanced
performers may seem about right. However, in
East Asian countries between 35 and 50
percent of students perform at the same
‘advanced’ levels.
A second way in which low expectations can
be institutionalised in educational practice is
by placing ceilings on learning. It is well known
that students are more likely to learn
successfully when engaged and motivated and
when provided with learning opportunities
appropriate to their current levels of
achievement and learning needs. Students are
less likely to learn when given work that is
much too easy or much too difficult for them,
meaning that ‘differentiated’ teaching is
important when students are at widely varying
levels of achievement.
However, expectations are lowered for
students when they are assigned to classes or
streams that place a ceiling on what they are
able to learn or how far they are able to
progress. In an effort to provide ‘relevant’
learning experiences appropriate to students’
abilities and interests, educational courses
often protect participants from intellectual
rigour and limit what they are able to learn.
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For example, in mathematics – which often
labours under the belief that it is inherently
difficult, obscure and of limited relevance for
many students – it is common to create easier
streams for less able students. But these
easier streams, with their focus on low-level,
applied learning often have low expectations of
the quality and quantity of mathematics
learning and deny students access to the
essence and beauty of this subject.
Recent growth in secondary school completion
rates in Australia has been accompanied by
increases in the numbers of students taking
lower level courses of this kind. Since the mid-
1990s, the percentage of Year 12 students
taking elementary mathematics has grown by
30 per cent while the percentages taking
intermediate and advanced mathematics have
declined by 22 and 27 per cent respectively.
A third way in which low expectations can be
institutionalised is through the prejudging of
students’ capabilities based on their group
membership. When students are grouped
according to demographic characteristics, it is
clear that some student groups have higher
average levels of achievement than others. For
example, students living in rural and remote
areas tend to have lower average achievement
levels than students living in urban areas.
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Girls tend to outperform boys, particularly in
language-rich
subjects.
Non-Indigenous
students outperform Indigenous students, and
students
from
high
socioeconomic
backgrounds outperform students from low
socioeconomic backgrounds. In some cases,
these gaps are the equivalent of two or more
years of school. The problem arises when
expectations of individuals are then lowered
on the basis of the group/s to which they
belong.
In educational practice, there is often a small
step from observing a correlation – for example
between socioeconomic background and
achievement – to treating this observation as
an ‘explanation’. Low socioeconomic status is
regularly invoked as an explanation for low
achievement, despite the fact that some
students from low socioeconomic backgrounds
can be found among the highest achievers in
our schools and universities, and some
students
from
high
socioeconomic
backgrounds can be found among our lowest
achievers. And from ‘explanation’, it is another
small step to ‘expectation’ and beyond that to
‘excuse’.
School principals who have led significant
improvements in low socioeconomic areas
often report that their first challenge was to
confront low staff expectations. In these
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schools, teachers had come to expect low
achievement on the basis of students’
backgrounds.
And there are other, more subtle, ways in
which observed correlations can lead to
lowered expectations. For example, it is a
small step from comparing schools with
statistically similar student intakes to
concluding that students in a particular
school are performing well ‘given their
socioeconomic backgrounds’ or ‘given the
proportion of Indigenous students in the
school’.
Conclusions of this kind border on what is
sometimes referred to as the ‘soft bigotry’ of
low expectations. Prejudging and ‘prejudice’
have identical etymological origins: both can
be the result of ignoring individuality and
assigning
individuals
the
presumed
characteristics of a group.
There is a long history in school education of
observing differences in average group
performances and then designing programs
and initiatives to address the needs of specific
student groups (for example, the needs of
boys, Indigenous students or students from
low socioeconomic backgrounds). However,
there is little evidence that the achievement
gaps such programs and initiatives were
108
designed to address have closed significantly
in recent decades. More generally, there is a
question as to whether emphasising group
membership
is
counterproductive.
A
preoccupation with demographic distinctions
may serve only to highlight existing differences
and cement future expectations.
A fourth way in which low expectations can be
institutionalised is by prejudging students’
capabilities on the basis of their age or grade.
Schools continue to be organised on
traditional lines with students grouped and
taught in grades based on age. Under this
‘assembly-line’ model, students move in a
lock-step fashion from one year to the next,
with teachers at each stage delivering the
curriculum for that grade.
This model has been strengthened in recent
years with the development of explicit grade-
based
curricula
with
accompanying
assessments to establish how much of the
curriculum for their grade students have
mastered. This practice is another example of
the use of group membership to set
expectations for student learning.
The reality in learning areas such as
mathematics and reading is that, despite this
lock-step model, students in the same grade
currently vary in their achievement levels by
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as much as five or six years of school. As
Dylan Wiliam has observed, in practice there
is only a loose relationship between
educational achievement and age.
If teachers treat all students of the same age
as equally ready for the same grade-based
curriculum and teach to the middle of the
grade, then some lower-achieving students are
likely to be left behind. There is evidence that
many of these students fall further behind
with each year of school. At the same time,
expectations are lowered for higher-achieving
students when learning is limited to the
completion of class work targeted at the
middle of the grade. It is not uncommon to
hear of classes in which more able students,
rather than being challenged and extended,
are given ‘free time’ once they have completed
set class work.
In spite of limiting beliefs and practices of this
kind, many teachers, school leaders and
parents share powerful alternative beliefs
about student learning. These include beliefs
that every individual is capable of learning,
with no natural limits on what most
individuals can learn; that at any given time,
students are at different points in their
learning and may be progressing at different
rates, but that all are capable of further
progress if motivated and if provided with
110
learning opportunities appropriate to their
readiness
and
needs;
that
individual
differences in ability to learn are readily
compensated for by effective teaching; that
starting points for teaching are best
established individually rather than inferred
from group membership; and that excellent,
ongoing progress is a more appropriate
expectation of every learner than the
expectation that all students of the same
age/grade will be at the same point in their
learning at the same time. In situations where
teachers, school leaders and parents share
beliefs of this kind, expectations are raised
and students perform beyond the limits
imposed by the rationing of excellence, low-
level courses that deny access to high
achievement,
r