I Not Stupid 3: When anxiety from obsessing over grades in school lasts well into adulthood

As a journalist who has spent years listening to all kinds of people tell me about their lives, and as someone who has benefited from almost a decade of telling my therapist about mine, I've come to learn one of life’s deepest truths: The stories we believe about ourselves end up shaping who we become.

For better or worse, one common narrative many of us grow up telling ourselves in results-driven Singapore is that our academic calibre – the first taste of success or failure for most – makes us who we are. And I Not Stupid 3, the latest part in the popular film franchise by Singaporean filmmaker Jack Neo that centres around this exact theme, revisits society's obsession with grades.

Released last Thursday (Jun 6) in Singapore cinemas, the movie highlights such limiting self-beliefs developed through our formative school years. These beliefs often end up cementing a core worldview that usually remains intact in adulthood, sometimes even when we’re challenged with new experiences and perspectives. 

This third instalment – which comes 22 years after the debut, I Not Stupid, and 18 years after the second, I Not Stupid Too – couldn’t be more timely. Many of us, who watched the first two films and saw ourselves as the stressed kids on screen, now have children of our own... and perhaps may relate to Tiger Parenting. (No judgement.)

I Not Stupid 3 spotlights the rivalry between two mothers who will stop at nothing for their sons to overtake the other, even when their single-minded pursuit of success for their sons’ own good comes at the expense of, well, their sons’ own good. 

In fact, perhaps three lines in the trailer best sum up the film’s intended talking point: "22 years on, why do we not understand our children better? 22 years on, why are parents still obsessed with their children’s school grades? 22 years on, why do parents still deprive their children of a happy and simple childhood?"

In standard Jack Neo style, the storyline is fairly formulaic and a touch caricatured. But I expected as much, and didn't feel it needed to have changed drastically for me to learn something new. After all, it's been 22 years – I've changed.

Watching the same movie at various points in life often results in a different takeaway each time, coloured by our life experiences, beliefs and values, and even emotional range at that point. As the famous saying goes, "We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are."

WHEN ADOLESCENT BELIEFS BECOME ADULT BURDENS

While I Not Stupid 3 rehashes the tried-and-tested academic trauma narrative that its now-grown millennial audience will find familiar, the film also delves a little into the parents' backstories, touching on the deeper beliefs that underpin their obsession with their children’s grades. 

Had I watched this film when I was younger, I’d probably conclude that a kiasu (afraid of losing out) society creates Tiger Parenting, which turns mothers into monsters and puts undue pressure on children. Stress is evil. Suffering is bad. Ban all tuition. And I wouldn’t be totally wrong. 

But about two decades since leaving primary school, the first place I fully felt the suffocating pressure to perform, I now know life’s experiences are rarely binary. I've seen the negative consequences of carrying well-intended beliefs from young into adulthood – and, if we have children, into parenthood. More often than not, these beliefs are baggage, whether we bear the burden ourselves or unwittingly place it on another.

In the movie, one Tiger Mum defends the harsh manner she berates her son, as she was disciplined similarly as a child. In separate scenes, another Tiger Mum, who incessantly pushes her son to beat his biggest rival, reveals that she just wants to make her husband proud of her.

And when a junior teacher expresses concern that a mother seems to be abusing her son by hitting him when he doesn’t perform, an older teacher reminds his colleague that he himself had also endured corporal punishment as a child. It'd been part and parcel of life, he noted, and besides he turned out fine.

In real life, just last week, someone older than me recounted that after she received her O Level results, she took a major gamble. She listed a single choice on her form for post-secondary education – the only polytechnic course she really desired – and she got in.

The experience from more than two decades ago left a mark till present day because it had taught her that it would be equally easy to get whatever she wanted in life from then on. Then her three years in poly actually began, and she had a rude awakening.

On the other hand, after watching my grades consistently plummet from top in class in Primary One to bottom three by Primary Six no matter how hard I studied, my form teacher advised my mum to manage her expectations for my PSLE (Primary School Leaving Examination) score. While my mum told me to do my best, my confidence had been shot and I didn’t bother studying much.

When my score eventually qualified me for the Gifted stream, beating out several classmates whose grades had always made me feel stupid, no one was more shocked than me. But my teachers did try. One told me, slack-jawed, that she hadn’t expected it; another said I was "so lucky".

The experience taught me that my success was a fluke, that it shouldn’t be mine, and that one day it would disappear – just like it had after Primary One. Thus began more than 20 years of toxic perfectionism, of working myself to the bone so I would be deserving of any success. And in a meritocratic society, of course I reaped the rewards.

But anyone who has tried shedding the weight of imposter syndrome knows that to be deserving of your accomplishments is the easy part. To believe you are, is a whole different beast.

In my 30s now, it's more obvious than ever these individual experiences share a common thread: Our accomplishments, as well as what we take from them, define our self-worth. And rewriting that societal narrative requires us to understand why we've each told ourselves the same story on a personal level and why it has endured.

REWRITING OUR STORIES

Dismantling that core belief, however, requires a more fundamental approach on top of big-picture solutions like de-emphasising exams, focusing on work-life balance or encouraging more playtime. I also don’t quite believe the answer is as simple as doing things differently in our daily lives, such as hang around others who don't prioritise academic results, as though we'll automatically take on their worldview. 

A person’s behaviour always makes sense from their perspective, American psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb once wrote as well. Rather than instinctively reacting defensively to something unpleasant they’ve done, she proposed reacting "relationally" by finding out the underlying reason for their behaviour. Even though the 'why' shouldn't be an excuse, it would serve as an explanation. 

So, perhaps the answer to a question posed in the movie's trailer – "22 years on, why do we not understand our children better?" – and the reason why its central theme remains relevant more than two decades later despite society's evolving education policies is that we haven’t understood ourselves better.

In my experience, getting people to embrace change requires empathising with why some shun it, and the most effective way to build empathy is to understand the story people tell themselves.

And as I know from helping interviewees piece together a coherent narrative about their lives to having my therapist challenge the beliefs I have about mine, stories can always be rewritten.