The first game I learned to play
Growing up in Hong Kong, education was gravity.
You couldn't miss the signs. Literally. Giant portraits of celebrity tutors wrapped around buses, stretched across buildings. My dad told me the same thing for years: “My dream is to see you graduate from university.” It wasn’t about pressure. It was pride. Culture. Identity.
By Year 2, teachers would start giving me advanced math worksheets, special reading assignments. They made me feel capable, smart. That compounded.
When grades turned from letters into numbers, everything clicked into place. A 91 felt good. A 95 felt great. But 97 was better.
People started saying, “You’ll be fine. You always do well.” They meant well, but it raised the stakes. The expectation meant failure became a character flaw. I didn’t avoid things because they were hard, I avoided them because not being instantly good at something felt wrong.
Grades measure something valuable but narrow. Intelligence and potential are far broader, far messier, and far more interesting.
Yet demonising grades misses the point. Grades are effective incentives. Grades create confidence, and confidence fuels effort.
The real enemy is passivity in believing grades are the only path forward.
The danger is tunnel vision, the lack of imagination, and the mistaken belief that the first game you learn to play, is the only one you'll ever play.
Rewiring incentives is impossibly hard. Better to leverage grades than fight them.