Tanner Glackin Ms.

Rand ENGL 1103 4 November 2013

Competition in Education Draft

As a college student who has been through the educational systems of public schools and is in a very competitively driven program, I have particularly noticed that the majority of the education that is handed to us is given to us in a fashion to where students compete among each other for higher recognition, whether consciously or unconsciously. The strive for the higher achievement that is limited to a select few that excel, will cause a motivation in students to beat out their fellow students to get the recognition and achieve success in education. This can be known as educational Darwinism, where social Darwinism is put into context with the educational system. (33) But is external competition among students really helping them get an actual education or is it hindering their ability to truly grasp the education that is handed to them, and allowing students to become preoccupied by the face value result of a letter or percentage grade? However according to John Rich and Joseph De Vitis, It is popularly held that competition enables individuals to do their best by excelling in their studies to achieve desired objectives () makes their studies more stimulating (). They also go on to exclaim that the competitive style of education also helps to prepare them for the competition in the work force. (11) Competition can influence both situations, positive and negative.

Competition is necessary and vital in education and in an educational system; it is just the way that it is oriented and used that determines whether it has a positive effect or a negative affect among education. In my experience I tend to strive in a competitive environment in context with subjects or working styles I feel strongly about. On the other hand in subjects that I feel like I tend to struggle in I become anxious, and tend to fall back letting my weakness deteriorate my confidence, further hurting my ability to receive a maximum education. When I interviewed with an Professor who teaches a UNC- Charlotte, she had exclaimed the same experiences that I have gone through and previously had gone through saying that in subjects that she felt stronger on, she was motivated by the competition, but in subjects that came to less of an ease to her, she tended to let the competition take over her ability to fully grasp and strive in the subject. (Peterson) So competition in the realm of confidence in subjects had dual consequences on the education of both Ms. Peterson and I, positive and negative. The competition that we experience in education could also have these very direct consequences because in this case we both are comparing ourselves to other students during the competitive process instead of comparing ourselves to ourselves or allowing for purely intrinsic motivation to affect our educational outcomes. In competitive situations we tend to judge ourselves based off of other people, and allow for an external competition to affect us both positively and negatively. Where as intrinsic motivation we only judge ourselves against our previous selves and compete with our previous selves, allowing us to build off our past and become more successful in the future. This outputs primarily positive results on a personal level and can even be facilitated by external

competition according to research done by Deci in 1981. The experiment was done by having two participants; the confederate (the constant) and the subject complete a happy cube puzzle in 2 different situations, a competitive and a non competitive situation. In the non-competitive situation, the participant where told to do the best that they could and where positioned in separate rooms, and in the competitive situation they were told to focus primarily on beating the other participant, and where located in the same room. In the competitive situation the subjects won all three trials, however in the non-competitive situation, subjects completed the puzzle faster than they did in the competitive environment. This study shows that intrinsic motivation had an even more positive affect on the ability to comprehend and complete a puzzle, than did external competition, proving intrinsic motivation to be more effective. (Deci) Intrinsic motivation has a very positive outcome concerning competition and has the same affect in education in my personal educational experience and in Matt Smiths educational experience, a student at UNC- Charlotte where he says he works better and performs better when he competes against himself rather than competing against others, which often causes him anxiety. (Smith) Where competition is constructive in intrinsic motivation, competition can be destructive when grades a put into the picture. Matt Smith and Ms. Peterson have shared the same concerns about the grading system and how it affects students. They both claim that students are becoming more preoccupied by the letter grade they are receiving in a particular course rather than getting a full education out of it. (Smith, Peterson)

Grades offer a simple shorthand for something more sustainable and deep learners focus on that higher order meaning rather than the symbols themselves or their point value in a competitive game. Motivation remains intrinsic. (Bain) However due to the size increase of students in schools and in the system, educators based the educational system of a industrial revolutionary mindset; a mass production of education and a mass generalization of performance assessment. This has created the grading scales and has enforced testing as a means of analyzing how much students have retained and understood the information given to them. In turn the educational system began to run off a competitive system, where students who received the highest grades where recognized and given greater benefits and opportunities, such as acceptances into certain colleges, or a place in certain job fields. The lower achieving students, usually separated in different classes than the higher achieving students, have more difficulty finding higher educational, or job opportunities. This is where competition begins to be destructive. Students are often lower educational retaining students are often neglected with dumbed down material rather than challenging themselves in higher-level courses. Ms. Peterson exclaimed that she believed that higher achieving students could stay in the same level class as in the lower achieving students, and act as a tutor or mentor to lower achieving students. In her words retaining information has a limit what you learn, as where teaching the material, you are able to learn more and understand the topic more. Since students are pressured to achieve higher than their fellow students due to the mass generalization of the grading system, students will compete among each other so that they will get the high achievements. This could incite cheating in some cases. The system can also have a complete opposite effect among students. The competition given

to them would in turn create anxiety and stress preventing that student from learning, working efficiently and receiving an adequate grade in the course. As Bain said You play the game of school to win against your competition not to learn. This goes with what Matt pointed out to me in the interview that I stated earlier, It is when the letter grade becomes more important than the actual education that competition begins to hurt someones ability to learn and becomes a destructive element in ones education. (Smith) The harm done (by competition) perhaps is supposed to be done not by the mere existence of marks, grades, prizes, competitions, etc., but by the exaggerated attention given to these things, or the way competitiveness is encouraged or fostered among the pupils by the staff.(Bain) Grades however are necessary which pointed out in the quote, and their set of analyzing students is necessary, due to how public schools respond to the amount of students they receive for education. I mean how else would the government go about educating the whole entire nation? The only true non-competitive way of education was mentor mentee, the tutor and the tutored, master and the apprentice and so on. The one on one styles of education where mostly common when the majority of the population was uneducated and education wasnt provided by the state. Education was at that time always personally funded and usually only the children of the rich or the upper class received an education, because why would a peasant who spends their lives working in the fields need an education any ways. So because the state requires everyone to be educated to the age of 16 they had to come up with a way of mass producing education.(Rich, De Vitts) The educational system of America also reflects off of the Americans economic model of capitalism and the American dream. Students can achieve what they put into their education but will have to compete with students along the way.()

Among some of the most common arguments against competition in education is that, How can the system be fare if it is judges people off other people who have different financial backgrounds, different methods of learning that works better for them, but to summarize the argument, how can competition in education be fare if we are not all equal. That is essentially what the argument is. Americas perception on equality in some cases has hindered us from realizing that we are not equal, yes and in turn competition is unfair. In Kurt Vonneguts famous short story Harrison Burgeon, the United States is in the year 2081 and equality was strictly enforced among all civilians. All citizens where forced to wear things that made them completely handicap in every aspect, a mask to hide appearance, a buzzer to hinder thoughts, sand bags to reduce walking speed. One man who resembles competition and humans innate capability breaks the law and removes all handicaps from his body, walks into a news station, proclaims himself emperor, takes the handicaps off a ballet dancer and proclaims her his queen. They dance which in turn makes them float in the air, before the handicap director shoots and kills both on the spot. (Harrison Burgeon) This story shows that the notion of complete equality destroys the reality of humans being able to reach their full capacity, and relating this to education: to learn. So to have competition we cannot at the same time have equality. In the story Vonnegut also portrays competition as a way to reach our full capacity symbolically through Harrison Burgeon. The competitive system of American education can also help certain students find what subject best suites them. Students who are really good at mathematics and science could struggle in history, or English. Some people are better at artistic subjects such as dance, music, theatre and visual arts, than they are at any other subject. Or students are

more athletically gifted than intellectually gifted, or they could simply be better looking, have better social skills, or worse social skills. No one is better than the other, just different.(Bain) We are all like branches on a tree, we all grow differently and in our own special way.(Bain) Referring back to Ms. Petersons comment I stated previously in the paper, competition is generally constructive in subjects that one feels more confident in and begins to be deconstructive when one feel less confident with a subject. Competition helps and hurts everyone in different ways and the ways we uses competition can affect how much we get out of our education. Competition can be used intrinsically which remains to have mostly positive outcomes over using competition to compete with other students. Competition can also drive student to become unfocused on the education they are receiving and primarily focusing on the letter grade, which will be compared to their fellow students. It can help us find a focus on life and help us find what we are strongest at. It can also spur unhealthy emotions like anxiety and or depression. Competitions affect on students in education is dependent on how effectively and how students and educators orient the competition in education. ! !