Five Secrets of the World’s Best Students
What are the secrets of Botswana’s top-performing students? Let’s take a quick look at the differences between
ordinary and extraordinary students. It never hurts to learn from the best. Who knows? You might just learn
how to go from average to amazing in 2014.
1. Self Discipline: Some students are like rusty wheelbarrows: they only move when they’re pushed. They roll
along with squeals and moans. Exceptional students are like bicycles. They propel themselves at a fast pace.
They don’t wait for someone to get them rolling; they’re self-starters and, as a result, they go much farther.
Self discipline has nothing to do with wearing a blazer or standing in silent, straight lines. That kind of discipline
is imposed by others and it disappears quickly when someone isn’t standing over you.
Self discipline is about making a sacrifice. Sometimes it means putting off what you really like doing: hanging out
with friends when there’s work to be done, watching TV, SMS-ing, going on Facebook, whatever it might be.
The fancy name for this is “deferred gratification.” Whatever you call it, it builds success.
What pleasure or pastime, would you need to sacrifice to excel?
Some students get distracted easily; amazing students know that sticking with their prime task and ignoring all
interruptions will bring big rewards. Some students put off the toughest jobs till later in the day; amazing
students do the most difficult assignments first, when they’re fresh.
Ordinary students are fuzzy about what they wish to achieve and how. Extraordinary students are crystal clear:
they know precisely what grades they want to achieve and in what specific subjects.
The best students constantly remind themselves of what they want. They get a piece of paper and they write
down their goals in the present tense. They post those written goals such as “I am getting an A in Maths” – in
places where they’ll see them every day. Self discipline becomes less difficult – it’s never easy – when you have
your own marching orders on daily display.
2. Time Management: The best students get the same amount of time as average students -- 24 hours a day, 7
days a week – but they manage that time much better. Managing your time is like packing a suitcase. You write
up a packing list and then you make sure the big items go in first, followed by the smaller items. It’s no good
trying to jam a big item into your suitcase if you loaded the small stuff first.
The best students jump at the chance to use small segments of time, small spaces in the suitcase. They know how
often you have to wait for short periods of time: say it’s 15 minutes waiting for a ride. Average students look
down the road and tap their feet. Amazing students look in the book they’re reading – they carry a book at all
times – and tap their brain.
Extraordinary students make sure that even the smallest bits of time serve his/her purpose. If you respect the
value of these small segments of time, you can bet the larger chunks will be cherished as well.
3. Body Language: Extraordinary students deliberately position themselves at or near the front of the class,
close to the teaching action. They sit up and listen intently to whomever is speaking. Extraordinary students
nod their heads to indicate they understand; they ask questions, they track the speaker with their eyes, be it
teacher or student, and they soak up whatever the teacher might choose to illustrate or demonstrate.
Ordinary students are usually more focused on socializing than learning. Their priority is to sit with friends or to
position themselves near the back of the class to avoid the teacher. Ordinary students are soon slouching in their
seats; their gazes wandering all over the show. They imagine how embarrassing it might be to raise their hand
and ask a question. They prefer to be silent and confused rather than to risk being active and clear.
4. Finding a Mentor: A mentor is a kind of coach, an older, more experienced person who advises a younger
person. Wherever you go, there is someone who has travelled that way before, someone who knows the tricky
turns and can help you avoid the deepest potholes in the road. Extraordinary students often find a teacher to act
as a mentor but it can also be an older student, relative or family friend. They choose a mentor who inspires
them, a person they trust and feel comfortable with, someone they can talk to regularly.
Ordinary students typically regard teachers and older students as a nuisance, as creatures to be endured, not
human resources to be tapped. Ordinary students cannot bring themselves to say the four magic words that
might save wrong turns and wasted effort, the four words that extraordinary students say without hesitation: “I
need your help.”
The Fifth Secret: Reading
Even if you have exceptional self discipline, manage your time skilfully, exhibit the body language of a dedicated
student and regularly consult a wise mentor, it will mean little if you don’t read. Reading feeds a passion to learn
just as wax feeds a candle’s flame. To put it simply, reading illuminates and informs a life.
A brief look at four talented leaders and thinkers – Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela and
Winston Churchill -- shows their learning unfolded in strikingly different ways, sometimes with, but often
without, or despite, a teacher. One theme is constant though: they all have a huge appetite for reading.
Books were precious for a lonely Indiana farm boy whose skill with an axe was exceeded by his hunger to learn
new words and to read. Surrounded by dense forests, most of the lad’s time was taken up with felling trees,
splitting rails and helping to raise houses. Taken together, all of Abraham Lincoln’s formal school education
added up to only a year, but that didn’t stop him.
One of Lincoln’s cousins, who lived with him as a teenager, recalls: “ When Abe and I returned to the house from
work, he would go to the cupboard, snatch a piece of cornbread, take down a book, sit down in a chair, cock his
legs up as high as his head, and read…. Lincoln devoured all the books he could get or lay hands on.” When
Lincoln hired himself out as a manual labourer; his preferred payment was books.
The man who would later pen the eloquent final lines of the Gettysburg Address -- “that government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” -- read voraciously from the plays of
Shakespeare and pored over biographies of Ben Franklin and George Washington. A friend called the adventures
that thrilled Lincoln in the Arabian Nights “a pack of lies.” “Mighty fine lies” was Lincoln’s response. “My best
friend,” he claimed, “is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.”
Reading defined the non-conformist approach of Albert Einstein, father of modern physics. At the age of twelve,
Einstein took a radical leap away from faith through his enthusiastic reading of popular scientific books: “I soon
reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true.” Einstein would always hold a
profound regard for the elegant beauty and balance of what he called the mind of God. He was less impressed by
the dogmas that dominated the minds of men.
Einstein’s contempt for authority did not endear him to some of his teachers. One said that his insolence made
him unwelcome in class. When Einstein insisted that he had committed no offence, the teacher replied, “Yes, that
is true, but you sit there in the back row and smile, and your mere presence here spoils the respect of the class for
me.”
Einstein later wrote: “A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.” During the six decades of his
scientific career, it was Einstein’s powerful independence of mind, prompted by his reading, that gave him the
courage to challenge established scientific beliefs and to revolutionise our understanding of physics.
During his 27 years in prison, another revolutionary, Nelson Mandela, struggled to overcome his warders’
determination to cut off any news of the outside world. As he said in Long Walk To Freedom, “Newspapers are
more valuable to political prisoners than gold or diamonds, more hungered for than food or tobacco.”
One secret benefit of the long hours spent chipping limestone in Robben Island’s notorious quarry was that the
warders ate sandwiches that were wrapped in forbidden newspapers. While prisoners distracted them, the
warders’ discarded papers were plucked from bins and stashed in shirts for later reading.
Little wonder then that Mandela enthusiastically championed the joy of reading. As he recalled:”This joy is one
that I have treasured all my life, and it is one I wish for all South Africans.”
Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, who became the inspiring voice of resistance to Hitler’s
aggression, was a voracious reader. Churchill may have loved books, but he certainly did not love school. His
housemaster at the famous British “public” school, Harrow, wrote of the young Churchill: “Constantly late for
school … he is so regular in his irregularity that I really don’t know what to do.”
At one point, Churchill received the lowest marks in the school. Nevertheless it was at Harrow that Churchill,
inspired by a superb young teacher, devoured Thackeray, Dickens, Wordsworth and every biography he could lay
his hands on.
During his time with the British Army in India, Churchill resolved to read even more widely. “I read three or
four books at a time to avoid tedium.” He found he had “a liking for words and for the feel for words fitting and
falling into their places like pennies in the slot. I caught myself using a good many words the meaning of which I
could not define precisely. I admired these words, but was afraid to use them for fear of being absurd.”
Churchill’s delight in words led to a career as a well-paid journalist and author in addition to his numerous
political duties.
If you want to become a world-class student, I can think of no finer advice than Churchill’s on the subject of
books:
“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall
open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests your eye … Let them be your friends; let them at
any rate be your acquaintances.”
Andrew Taylor
Principal, Maru-a-Pula School
Gaborone, Botswana
Email: principal.map@gmail.com
School website: www.maruapula.org
Further Secrets of Botswana’s Best Students
1. Team Work Wins: don’t make a habit of studying alone. Teams of students keep each other
motivated and encourage each other when the going get’s tough. An old African proverb says: If
you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
2. Test Yourself