You don't have to hang around most schools or universities for very long before someone uses the word excellence.
In a world that places increasing value on rankings, league tables, and other sources of external validation, excellence suggests a race to the top, striving to be A* and not just A.
As one author once wrote, back in 2015:
Universities are jostling for league table positions in relation to teaching and research excellence. Governments want school teachers to aspire to it. Schools are tying themselves in knots to get themselves rated as excellent by schools inspectorate Ofsted. And university careers services are advising students to “strive for” it.
The problem, however, is that the pursuit of excellence has a documented downside to the point that some university professors have started to say that the "regime of excellence" means that many of the research papers that are published today are not worth reading, not even their own. The result is a movement to become "less excellent" in order to become a better scholar.
Of course, this debate is not new. But I was reminded of it while reading Matt Haig's novel, The Midnight Library, while on holiday this summer.
Nora, the main character in the book, is living a life that is far from excellent. Then, at the stroke of midnight on her last day on earth, she finds herself transported to a library where she is given the chance to undo her regrets and try out each of the lives she might have lived.
Without giving away too much of the plot, there is a point in her adventure when she recalls Aristotle's idea that "excellence was never an accident" but the result of "the wise choice of many alternatives."
Mrs Elm, the Librarian and Nora's mentor throughout the story, explains what this might mean using the analogy of a chessboard.
Look at that chessboard… Look at how ordered and safe and peaceful it looks now, before a game starts. It's a beautiful thing. But it is boring. It is dead. And yet the moment you make a move on that board, things change. Things begin to get more chaotic. And that chaos builds with every single move you make…. It's an easy game to plan, but a hard one to master… it gets very messy. And there is no right way to play; there are many ways.
For Aristotle, excellence is Arete, the ultimate expression of human greatness. But, he says, it is "formed in man by his doing the actions." In other words, excellence is not so much a one-time act, but a habit and a way of living. It's the ability to continually make wise choices when life gets chaotic and messy.
In a week when students around the world are receiving their A-level examination results and schools are busy speaking to their tradition of excellence, maybe we'd do well to try out another story; a story in which we underline the real work of preparing students to play the game of life, to make wise choices (as opposed to perfect choices), and to master the art of figuring out what to do when life gets messy.
Photo by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash.
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