To Rank or Not to Rank?

When I was in school, I used to look forward to exams. This was mainly because; I wanted to know which of my friends I had defeated, and which ones had defeated me. I was not in a primary school that appeared anywhere near the top 1,000 schools but I still looked forward to see which schools performed best. My friends and I would anxiously wait for the secondary school results and ranking to come out so that we could fantasise which schools we would be joining when we finished our primary schooling.

When I did my KCPE and passed well, I was happy to join one of my dream schools whose reputation I had gleaned from previous rankings. The excitement I used to get in those days is not something I can give up for anything. I am sad for my children because that has now been taken away from them.

I enjoy watching sports, especially athletics. I am eager to know who will win and who the runner-up will be. My sole objective of watching athletics is to know who will win and how he will do it. When we were in school, everyone would be on the lookout for one Bernard Kariuki Kuria. It was not just the fact that we knew he would win every single 5,000 and 10,000 metre race, it was the way he did it. He would run at a constant speed in all the laps – until the last one. He would be like lightning. He would sprint on that one last lap, even passing the competitors in the tail one last time. We always used to say that if sprinters were gunned off as he crossed the 100 metre line, he would still defeat them. The sole aim of every race was to be ranked first.

I recall the way the excitement built during the last election as the votes trickled in. Every contestant holding a seat today does so due to being ranked the most popular. If you think about it, there is less merit in being elected to a political position than there is in performing well in an exam. If beauty contest rules were used in an election instead of leadership policies, I bet a lot of the same characters holding those seats today would still win.

In my layman’s eye, life is about competition. It is not just about cheering a winner; it is about motivating a loser. Competition brings out the best in all of us. The majority of us get into contests to win. I say, let our children compete with each other so that they can be prepared to face life. They need to be told that they will be ranked in everything they do be it job interviews, elections, or sports. They will even be ranked in their pursuit of suitable spouses.

If ranking is bad, why then, don’t we do away with all forms of ranking? We can elect leaders by acclamation. We can tell athletes in races that they were all winners and should all share the gold medal. We can do away with job interviews because they tell people that they don’t have equal capabilities. Everybody can just get hired. Let us go the whole hog and do away with everything that tells people they are different. But don’t take my word for it – I am only a layman.

P.S. I am unreliably informed that Arsenal FC, of which I am a staunch supporter, supports the abolishing of ranking in the Premier league. I am told that they claim ranking is bad for their supporters' morale.