Eliminating Competition in the formative years
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Revealing the results of exams must be stopped. Exams per se are fine as they help the teachers understand how clear a particular student is about a subject. Exams also help the teacher explain to the student's parents about the progress of their ward as well as the areas where attention is required. Giving the parents a number is pointless. Were a teacher to tell the parents that their ward has scored 86 would elicit (amongst a few other reactions) a "What is the maximum?" and once they are aware of that, they would move to "So, is that good? Where does he stand in the class?" and hardly ever a "Does this mean he has understood the subject well and can apply this at various points later in his life?"
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Revealing the results of exams must be stopped. Exams per se are fine as they help the teachers understand how clear a particular student is about a subject. Exams also help the teacher explain to the student's parents about the progress of their ward as well as the areas where attention is required. Giving the parents a number is pointless. Were a teacher to tell the parents that their ward has scored 86 would elicit (amongst a few other reactions) a "What is the maximum?" and once they are aware of that, they would move to "So, is that good? Where does he stand in the class?" and hardly ever a "Does this mean he has understood the subject well and can apply this at various points later in his life?"
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posted by Eroteme at 9:37 AM
2 Comments:
protecting children from the eventual reality of direct competition is in no way a good thing. i agree that there is no point in providing ranks to nine-year-olds but later on the merits far outweigh the cons. how else can a sense of competion be instilled? the desire to strive for something better than mediocre?
do you suggest grades as an alternative to marks? thus differentiating a student who got 89 from another who got 90? is there a solution to this debate? or is it like democracy and capitalism, not exactly good in itself but better than anything else out there.
Dear Krishanu,
What you raise is effectively the chicken-and-egg dilemma that has surrounded competition in the real world. We need to start with the question:
Is competition essential to the activity or to the person/competitor?
The article presents a view that competition is not essential to the act (of learning, singing, playing football or what you wish) itself but is of importance to the person. The intention is to make the child realise the true worth in performing a task (esp. that of learning) for the sake of achieving completion in the task and not of being better than another competitor(which is what competition gives a person). Putting it in one sentence, it is basically a question of pursuing absolute worth versus relative worth.
We shall forward the article to you so that you can read through it and then resume this discussion.
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