The Peter Principle T3P1

The Peter Principle is an interesting observation formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book, The Peter Principle. It states that "in a hierarchy, every person tends to rise to their level of incompetence". What it means in layman's terms is that a person usually gets promoted to a point where his level of skill is less than the others who were promoted to the same point, making him one of the people he got promoted past.

I decided to blog about this as I found this principle interesting and extremely true. This is the case in Hwa Chong. As this year, I am in secondary two, there will be streaming at the end of the year. What this means is that all the secondary two students will be streamed into different classes based on their academic abilities. Some may choose to take up special programmes in the area of their choice, while others may not even get the chance. Those who did extremely badly or have been found to have no discipline may get channelled to the "O" level class. This means that some students who may have been topping their class in all their subjects may find it to be a different case next year, where they get sorted into the class for other students who have been topping their classes. At this point, some of them will be found incompetent compared to the rest of their class while the top, if another streaming occurs, will carry on to be in the same class as the top of the top, like them. This would go on and on. As the Chinese saying goes, "There is always another taller mountain", one can never be the best as there will always be someone better than them.

However, this does not mean that we should stop trying to achieve the best we can. I believe that we should strive to accomplish what we do to the best of our ability, and aim for greater heights.