The Importance of High Standards for Students

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At the end of the day, most students are going to continually minimize their effort subject to the standards they’re held to.

It’s an optimization problem. The quantity to be minimized is effort, and the constraints are the standards. Let effort = f(x,y,z); minimize f subject to standards g(x,y,z) < A, h(x,y,z) > B, …

So it’s important to maintain high standards.

Now, before you jump down my throat with “but SOME students put forth high effort organically,” remember that 1) the exceptions prove the rule, and 2) all models are wrong but some are useful.

In particular, even in the case of exceptional students who put forth high effort organically, high standards are still useful. To those who actually intrinsically care about doing a good job,

• high standards communicate that their caring about doing a good job matters, and
• high standards can inspire them to do a GREAT job, not just a good job.

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