I had a similar experience in school - though no yelling. I often achieved A4s; A for academic grade, 4 for effort (1 being putting in all you've got, 4 being the opposite end of the scale). I took pride in this saying it showed I could deliver effortlessly. In some subjects which weren't in my skillsets (e.g. French & English) where I was getting Bs my parents said they wouldn't mind if they didn't think I could do better, but I was bright enough to get As were I to put in the effort; I decided that if I were less bright I wouldn't be expected to put in the effort, so aimed at making myself thicker (I still don't know how I'd hoped to achieve that, I just left it to lazyness and hoped that was enough). I also argued when it came to revising for exams, saying that revising was cheating as it doesn't show what you've learnt / retained, so anything you crammed in leading up to the exam was just temporary knowledge which you'd lose the moment the exam was over, so would give you false exam results grading you on a momentary peak rather than a general state for that phase of your life.

I blame myself for this, but feel education could be delivered differently to cater for people like us. I had a great education, attending the same school as Terry Pratchett and Heston Blumenthal had, with a lot of teachers who knew their subjects well and cared about their pupils' development, beyond just league table ratings. However, the reason I got A4s is because I never failed - I kept getting what I needed to without putting in effort; I needed a challenge to force me to push myself. In those days this may not have been possible; the internet was still in its infancy so you only competed with those in your year group. Streaming helps here, but with the numbers involved the top set may be the top 30 / 120 or so, so still a very mixed bag.

There are now a number of projects to provide education on-line. As this grows and the school/education models adapt to take advantage of this, I suspect we'll see competition between larger groups of people, encouraging those of a certain attitude to push themselves further to meet their full potential. That said, for those towards the bottom will this force them to up their game, or leave them feeling failures with no motivation? Hopefully the systems will evolve to aid those at both ends by selecting appropriate methods for the various personalities involved, allowing everyone to meet their potential.