4 ms·

This is brilliant! Learning should not be a competitive. EDIT: Why would you want to have children compete with each other on learning abilities? How does it h

This is brilliant! Learning should not be a competitive. EDIT: Why would you want to have children compete with each other on learning abilities? How does it help anyone? If a child is going to take a tad bit longer to understand than another child, I would rather the child take a bit longer to master than force the child to acquire the knowledge within a set duration. If they score 90% of the marks would you be happy that they scored 90% or unhappy that they could not master the remaining 10% and will never be given a second chance to do so? And what if your child crosses the passing marks of say 40%? Would you be happy that your child scraped through with passing marks or be unhappy that it never got that extra time to learn the remaining 60%? Not every child has the same grasping power. And by making learning a competition you are taking away the right to learn from a majority of these young children. I would rather the child compete with others on what it has learnt on a practical basis rather than theoretical! Currently, scores only determine how much of the theory the child has been able to master. There is no process that examines how that theoretical knowledge has been used effectively throughout the lifespan of the learner which is actually more important. Let them learn at the pace they are comfortable with. By making sure more children are properly educated we will, as a society, automatically reap the benefits of their future contributions. With competition, you are restricting the scope to the "gifted few" who will then have to bear the burden of the rest.

NotPaidToPost 7y ago
They do not compete on learning abilities, they compete on work. It is very disparaging to pupils to imply that if they "are not good" it's just because of their abilities. The message should be first and foremost that they can do it if they try hard.
- RobertoG 7y ago
  >>"The message should be first and foremost that they can do it if they try hard" There is a difference between the message "you can do better if you try harder" and the message "you can do everything if you try harder". The first is a good life lesson, the second is self-help books marketing. This way of thinking infect society and then we have to read things, normally wrote by millionaires, like "everyone can be rich". I suppose that it's the equivalent to "every country can be a net exporter at the same time" thinking in economics. Education should be about understanding how the world works, so, it should be also about understanding your limits. We would save in neurosis treatments.
  - NotPaidToPost 7y ago
    Obviously in my comment "it" meant having good grades. Call me an optimist but I believe that the overwhelming majority of children have the abilities to have good grades if they are pushed and kept motivated.
    - RobertoG 7y ago
      Sorry if my answer sounded too harsh. I think there is a kind of dichotomy between pushing and motivation and, very frequently, we forget to search the reason why there is not motivation and we only push.
      - shripadk 7y ago
        > forget to search the reason why there is not motivation The reason there is not enough motivation is because of competition. Let us go with a hypothetical scenario: You have a child who is weak in physics and good in chemistry and I have a child who is weak in chemistry and good in physics. They are friends and yet are also competitors. Do you think your child has any incentive to help my child get better at chemistry and my child has any incentive to help your child get better at physics? There is no incentive because competition at an individual level discourages team work and knowledge sharing. Mainly because this kind of competition is constrained by "Time". The only way our children can reduce the learning gap is by approaching the teacher, taking external tuitions or try to find the relevant material on the net (and do all this before the date of the examination). The teacher is unfortunately already overburdened (the country I come from is extremely competitive and the ratio of teachers to students is 1 to 40 and in some cases 1 to 70 or even 1 to 100). Very few can afford after-school tuitions. And tuitions is an extremely inefficient way to close the learning gap. It is obvious the child loses motivation to learn when encountered with such an environment where it has very few choices. Now remove competition from the equation and our children have all the incentive to share unique perspectives on how they were able to gain knowledge with each other. This reduces burden on the teacher as well! It would move the needle from "time-bounded competition" to "cooperative competition not bound by time". It isn't like it doesn't exist already! Take gaming as an example: It is competitive and cooperative at the same time. Friends help each other get better at the game by sharing tips and tricks and then compete on equal footing. It is addictive for this very reason. Schooling is not addictive because there is no short-term benefits the child can get for all the effort it puts into. Even much less when it comes to sharing knowledge with peers. Even us adults are rewarded almost immediately for the work we put in. Where is such an incentive for children? There is none. Ranking is not equivalent by any measure. Ranking is not money. It doesn't bring any pleasure. If your child tops the class you think its peers will be proud of your child's achievements? It creates and develops all negative traits: jealousy, animosity, dejection, depression and arrogance; depending on which side of the coin the child falls under. Expertise on the other hand is the best incentive. There is no greater satisfaction for the child than knowing that it has understood the subject matter completely. It will encourage it to study the subject further and tackle more complex topics. We should be striving for expertise not relative ranking.
JeanMarcS 7y ago
That’s exactly why my wife and I are still hesitating to bring back our kids in school in France. Some of the teachers give back tests in grade order, allegedly to value the bests, but it has a bad impact on the less advanced kids. And comparing to each other is the norm. Regardless, France education system is bad rated comparing to other countries...
- zeitg3ist 7y ago
  My physics teacher in high school gave back tests in grading order, starting from the lowest. Really humiliating for a 13 year old.
  - JeanMarcS 7y ago
    Thinking of it, just the fact to give back the tests and saying the grade out loud isn’t a good idea
    - zeitg3ist 7y ago
      He didn’t say the votes out loud, but since the tests were sorted it was clear who did well and who did not.
a-saleh 7y ago
Agreed. If your kid learns best by competing, then there are competitions for that, you know? I never performed too well on those (all the International Math/Physics/Informatics Olympiads), but I did love them! On the other hand, the final-leaving exams were weird. So much stakes on a single test, everybody nervous about it, some questions really obtuse, others seemed too easy, and then you read that some colleges want you to be in top percentile to get in, and I am like "go make your own admission test you lazy ..." ...

NotPaidToPost 7y ago

They do not compete on learning abilities, they compete on work. It is very disparaging to pupils to imply that if they "are not good" it's just because of their abilities. The message should be first and foremost that they can do it if they try hard.

RobertoG 7y ago
>>"The message should be first and foremost that they can do it if they try hard" There is a difference between the message "you can do better if you try harder" and the message "you can do everything if you try harder". The first is a good life lesson, the second is self-help books marketing. This way of thinking infect society and then we have to read things, normally wrote by millionaires, like "everyone can be rich". I suppose that it's the equivalent to "every country can be a net exporter at the same time" thinking in economics. Education should be about understanding how the world works, so, it should be also about understanding your limits. We would save in neurosis treatments.
- NotPaidToPost 7y ago
  Obviously in my comment "it" meant having good grades. Call me an optimist but I believe that the overwhelming majority of children have the abilities to have good grades if they are pushed and kept motivated.
  - RobertoG 7y ago
    Sorry if my answer sounded too harsh. I think there is a kind of dichotomy between pushing and motivation and, very frequently, we forget to search the reason why there is not motivation and we only push.
    - shripadk 7y ago
      > forget to search the reason why there is not motivation The reason there is not enough motivation is because of competition. Let us go with a hypothetical scenario: You have a child who is weak in physics and good in chemistry and I have a child who is weak in chemistry and good in physics. They are friends and yet are also competitors. Do you think your child has any incentive to help my child get better at chemistry and my child has any incentive to help your child get better at physics? There is no incentive because competition at an individual level discourages team work and knowledge sharing. Mainly because this kind of competition is constrained by "Time". The only way our children can reduce the learning gap is by approaching the teacher, taking external tuitions or try to find the relevant material on the net (and do all this before the date of the examination). The teacher is unfortunately already overburdened (the country I come from is extremely competitive and the ratio of teachers to students is 1 to 40 and in some cases 1 to 70 or even 1 to 100). Very few can afford after-school tuitions. And tuitions is an extremely inefficient way to close the learning gap. It is obvious the child loses motivation to learn when encountered with such an environment where it has very few choices. Now remove competition from the equation and our children have all the incentive to share unique perspectives on how they were able to gain knowledge with each other. This reduces burden on the teacher as well! It would move the needle from "time-bounded competition" to "cooperative competition not bound by time". It isn't like it doesn't exist already! Take gaming as an example: It is competitive and cooperative at the same time. Friends help each other get better at the game by sharing tips and tricks and then compete on equal footing. It is addictive for this very reason. Schooling is not addictive because there is no short-term benefits the child can get for all the effort it puts into. Even much less when it comes to sharing knowledge with peers. Even us adults are rewarded almost immediately for the work we put in. Where is such an incentive for children? There is none. Ranking is not equivalent by any measure. Ranking is not money. It doesn't bring any pleasure. If your child tops the class you think its peers will be proud of your child's achievements? It creates and develops all negative traits: jealousy, animosity, dejection, depression and arrogance; depending on which side of the coin the child falls under. Expertise on the other hand is the best incentive. There is no greater satisfaction for the child than knowing that it has understood the subject matter completely. It will encourage it to study the subject further and tackle more complex topics. We should be striving for expertise not relative ranking.

JeanMarcS 7y ago

That’s exactly why my wife and I are still hesitating to bring back our kids in school in France. Some of the teachers give back tests in grade order, allegedly to value the bests, but it has a bad impact on the less advanced kids. And comparing to each other is the norm. Regardless, France education system is bad rated comparing to other countries...

zeitg3ist 7y ago
My physics teacher in high school gave back tests in grading order, starting from the lowest. Really humiliating for a 13 year old.
- JeanMarcS 7y ago
  Thinking of it, just the fact to give back the tests and saying the grade out loud isn’t a good idea
  - zeitg3ist 7y ago
    He didn’t say the votes out loud, but since the tests were sorted it was clear who did well and who did not.

a-saleh 7y ago

Agreed. If your kid learns best by competing, then there are competitions for that, you know? I never performed too well on those (all the International Math/Physics/Informatics Olympiads), but I did love them! On the other hand, the final-leaving exams were weird. So much stakes on a single test, everybody nervous about it, some questions really obtuse, others seemed too easy, and then you read that some colleges want you to be in top percentile to get in, and I am like "go make your own admission test you lazy ..." ...