Hacker News Reader

Comment by chasd00 | Hacker News Reader

My wife and I listened to a podcast on this subject a few months ago. My son got into a fairly high achieving magnet school (for DISD anyway), Townview SEM in Dallas, so we were interested. It really boils down to home life and how hard you push and what values you instill in a child. Attending a high achieving high school isn’t the real problem, it’s how you setup a child’s perspective of their own self worth.

View on HN

Completely concur. Setting high standards and then providing a supportive environment to get these sets kids for success rather than failure.

I would have been more charitable to the author if I read this a few years ago but of late, there's been so much negativity against any kind of pressure and a "glorification" of mediocrity and doing nothing done, it's almost like being an achiever is something to be ashamed of. Of course it has costs, of course there are risks. The point is to tackle and overcome all that and achieve something great. Not to sit idly being "safe" all the time.

> a "glorification" of mediocrity and doing nothing done

There is a large spectrum between "high achievement" and "mediocrity". Opposing mediocrity (even worse "doing nothing done") to high achievement is a false dichotomy.

One of the biggest struggles with high achievement comes from having to choose which activities to be an achiever. Sometimes you have to explicitly decide which activities to exclude. You have to learn how to be okay with not being the best at everything. You have to be tactical. Otherwise, you end up chasing your tail and get easily lost in details.

> it's almost like being an achiever is something to be ashamed of

this is definitely a thing. I know people that when a child does something great whether it's academics or sports or something else it's hushed away like "what will the neighbors think?". I can't get my head around it.

Depends what you call a 'success', what you list provides no success on my list, maybe some high paid high pressure career but thats not a definition of successful life well lived.

I'm suggesting that any definition of "success" requires hard work and high standards.

Academic/professional is one and you can choose to opt out in which case you're not the target audience for this discussion which is fine.

I’m curious: what was the podcast?

I'll followup here, it's really good but will have to ask my wife. This will take a few hours, she's a teacher and at a workshop so unavailable ATM.

https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/never-enough-dismant...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com