Monsoon Semester 03: Topper No More
English

Kabir was the best student
his town had ever seen.
His name is still painted on the
toppers' board at his school.
This is his first quiz here.
Roll number on every sheet, please.
Forty-five minutes.
You may begin.
Ten minutes, please.
Pens down. Pass your sheets to the aisle.
That was so easy. Q2 was straight
out of our coaching module.
Arre, I did that exact
question in class eleven.
Kabir, you got Q2?
Haan. Easy.
Seventeen! One silly mistake, yaar.
Nineteen.
Somebody got six. Six out of twenty!
Kabir, na? Quiz okay?
Fine, sir. Fine.
Good, good!
In Hindi, the explanation
took him two lines.
In English, it took the whole evening.
Kabir! Dinner? Paneer today!
Not hungry, yaar. You go.
Paneer, Kabir. Paneer!
Kabir! Dikh raha hai?
Haan, dikh gaya.
Khana khaya? You look thin.
Mummy, it's only been three weeks.
Three weeks is enough to get thin.
Papa went to the bank today.
First instalment of the loan, done.
Sab theek hai, don't worry.
Poora mohalla pooch raha tha.
Everyone is asking about you.
Achha.
Mummy, woh quiz...
Haan, the quiz! How did our topper do?
Achha gaya, Mummy. It went well.
Mujhe pata tha! I told
Papa, our Kabir will do it.
Chalo, padhai karo.
And eat properly.
Haan, Mummy.
Ma'am, it's nine o'clock.
What are you still doing here?
Three hundred lines.
One on each quiz.
Why a line? The number says it all.
The number says what happened.
The line says what to do next.
I finished grading in two days.
Marks are already on the noticeboard.
On the noticeboard.
By roll number. No names.
Completely transparent.
Their friends know their roll
numbers by the second week.
Students like to know where they stand.
Now they know where everyone else stands.
They're adults, ma'am.
They're eighteen. And nearly every one
of them was the topper of somewhere.
So?
So half of them are
now in the bottom half.
For the first time in their lives.
That's just arithmetic.
Tell that to an eighteen-year-old
at the noticeboard.
I never thought of it like that.
You thought of it like a topper.
Now make yourself useful.
The kettle is behind you.
Your quizzes are at the end of your row.
Folded. The mark is inside, and
it's for you, not your neighbour.
I've written one line on each.
Read the line before you read the number.
And if your line says come
and see me, come and see me.
'You rushed Q4. Slow down.'
How does she know I rushed?
Because you rushed.
Nobody asked Kabir to move.
He just did, a few rows at a time.
Psychologists have a name for this.
The big-fish-little-pond effect.
Take students of equal ability.
The ones surrounded by very strong
peers rate themselves as less capable.
Their ability hasn't changed.
Their pond has.
A meta-analysis, which pools the
results of many studies, found the
effect strongest in Asian samples.
And it persists into college.
So where almost everyone topped
their school, feeling average says
something about the class.
It is not a judgement on the student.
Now add the switch to English-medium
teaching, and a family's
sacrifice. A single low
mark can feel enormous.
For Kabir, all three
arrived in the same week.
I'm taking it down.
I didn't say anything.
You said it very loudly.
Before we start. A quick survey.
Hands up if you were the
topper of your school.
Keep it up if you topped your district.
State, sir?
Show-off.
Now look around.
Everyone in this room
was a topper somewhere.
So if you feel average
here, that's about the pond.
It's not about you.
Most of you will find
these first weeks hard.
That's normal. It passes.
And from now on, your marks come to you.
Not to the noticeboard.
Kabir stayed in the back row that week.
But he kept the note.
Try this week: tell your class that
almost everyone here was a topper,
and that early struggle
is normal and passes.
And share marks privately.
And here is a phrase to keep.
Everyone in this room
was a topper somewhere.
Feeling average here is about
the pond, not about you.
Support details and sources
are below this video.
See you in week four.