There’s room for healthy competition at school
Grade 9 students in the Collective Voice program at Aden Bowman Collegiate share their lives and opinions through columns. Selected columns run each Monday in The Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
When we take competitiveness out of learning, we are not preparing our future generations for the world outside school. Telling our youth that everyone is always a winner is not teaching them how to take constructive criticism.
Throughout my personal experiences, I have seen schools and teachers try to take the competitive aspect out of learning — for example, by not allowing students to share their marks after an exam.
At first, I was against taking competition out of schools. I thought if you teach students that everyone is always a winner, it won’t prepare them for the “real world” because the world outside school is highly competitive.
The world is competitive to a certain extent, whether it’s facing off with others for a certain job or attempting to get the last seat on the bus.
But if you think about it a little harder, maybe the world outside school isn’t as cutthroat as we might think.
Most jobs involve working with a group of people. As a team, you are expected to work together to finish various tasks. You don’t compete with your co-workers to see who can pitch the greatest idea; you brainstorm and come up with the best idea together.
Employers aren’t always looking for someone who’s overly competitive.
According to an article I read on forbes.com, the number one skill or quality that employers say they seek is the ability to work within a team environment.
To me, that means employers are looking for people who will be able to participate, cooperate and help out their group.
Competitiveness didn’t even make the top 10 list of skills that employers are looking for in future employees, according to the article. This implies that competing isn’t as important as some might think.
Maybe schools don’t need to focus on being competitive, but rather on teaching students to cooperate and contribute to groups.
I don’t think schools should completely eliminate competitiveness altogether. Personally, I am a very competitive person but still like to see everyone succeed. I work best in competitive situations, and competition pushes me to my limits. It pushes me to do my best and give things my all.
There needs to be a balance between competitiveness and cooperation.
Not everything we do at school should be competitive, but it is still good to have some friendly competition every once in awhile.
Throughout my years in school, I think most teachers have made sure to not only teach their students about competitiveness but to also inform them about the importance of working together and co-operating. I believe we should make sure that any competition we may encounter throughout our school years is friendly and beneficial, while also finding ways to let everyone in the class or group participate.