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In my experience certain children (and adults) -- ones who live in successful, wealthy neighborhoods are completely terrified of the idea of failing, at anything. They will start weeping if they feel like they performed poorly on an exam. Any test, no matter how meaningless, determines their self-worth. I'd imagine these students do disproportionately fantastic on this test. At this point it's culture/personality test, not a reasonable countrywide baseline.

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And that's perhaps why they, or at least their family became successful and/or wealthy in the first place?

If you don't even want to be successful and/or wealthy, and you don't try, your chance of becoming so is definitely much lower.

I think the pathology of worship of competition and the credentialing system -- insisting you must be the best on a test that you are explicitly told means nothing is a mental disorder developed due to being raised in certain cultural contexts, not a cause of success -- do you really think breaking down in tears at the slightest inconsequential setback is a good recipe for success in the primarily luck-driven market economy we live in? How many times do eventually successful entrepreneurs fail and keep going undiscouraged?

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