By: Elaine Hou
Once upon a time, in the land of competition…
A curious three year old named Thalia loved to hear and tell stories. She sat in amazement at the rug as her teacher read “The True Story of the Three Little Pigs” by John Scieszka. This upside-down and turned around version of a classic story tickled Thalia’s expectations and transported her into a whimsical world of what-ifs. Her drive to closely attend to the story was rooted deeply in the soil of joyful learning, and a wonder at the possibilities that re-told stories can hold.
Five years later, we find Thalia the third grader has grown into an older, more “schooled” version of the young learner enraptured by the adventures of the three little pigs. Her class is tracking how many books each person has read so far, and competing toward reading the most books by the end of the school year. Thalia’s drive has been uprooted from the soil of curiosity and appreciation for stories themselves. Instead, the goal of reading the most books has given Thalia a new meaning of success, one that is not based as much on personal enjoyment as being better than others. Five years later, it has become less about the joys of reading and stories, and more about beating someone else to the finish line. Looking toward the end of the year, it is uncertain whether Thalia will win the book competition. However, it is likely that she will develop a sense of self fulfilled more by comparison than personal learning.
The book “No Contest” by Alfie Kohn unpacks the above tale of competition in schools. While there are certainly many forms competition can take, Kohn quotes Elliot Aronson to sum up the heart of competition: “The American mind in particular has been trained to equate success with victory, to equate doing well with beating someone.” In the classroom, structures that support competition are often intended to motivate achievement based on comparison and ranking with others, rather than competition with self in service of personal and collective learning. Kohn argues that the following myths about competition in schools need to be critically examined and questioned, especially in light of 21st century learning demands.
Myth 1: Competition by nature promotes excellence.
Competition establishes one’s success based on someone else’s failure. What type of excellence does this definition of success really produce? If we use hierarchy alone to create achievement, then we may achieve fast results, but it is questionable whether those results demonstrate the quality of excellence that is deep and enduring. Too often, competing toward excellence is defined by completing a task in an easily measurable way, such as reading the most number of books, taking the least time to finish a problem, or including the most number of vocabulary words in a writing sample. Quantity is king because it can be easily calculated, ignoring the more complex and important criteria of quality work. While quantitative measurements and comparisons of achievement are not bad in and of themselves, they are not enough on their own to produce learning that is transferable. Transferable learning involves fully understanding the criteria of quality work and competing with yourself rather than others to achieve your personal best against that set of criteria.
Myth 2: Competition creates more efficiency.
As described above, competition may speed up the attainment of results, but the results are often based in fleeting quantity rather than lasting quality. This speed of results is celebrated as efficiency, where people are motivated to complete tasks faster because there is a prize to be the best in the end. However, efficiency, as defined by fast results on an individual level, is not what is most needed in the 21st century. In fact, efficiency is redefined in the 21st century.
Kohn argues that inefficiency results from people doing things on their own, resulting in a duplication of efforts rather than a collaboration of best insights and practices toward a common goal. Competition keeps resources isolated and fragmented in a 21st century world that demands complex solutions to never-before-solved problems. Instead of competing to see who can replicate a formula the fastest, the kind of efficiency we need in the 21st century involves collaborative problem-solving versus reproducing. This kind of efficiency involves people skillfully sharing their resources with each other in a diverse community. These resources are defined not only by factual or procedural knowledge, but by the perspectives and ways of understanding the world each team member brings. This collaboration rather than competition creates a much richer, more complex way of approaching problem-solving. It creates a greater whole much more efficiently than individuals trying to achieve it in parts.
Myth 3: Competition teaches us sportsmanship
Those who champion competition often exult the opportunities it provides to teach sportsmanship. While “winning graciously” is a commendable skill, it is still a skill situated in an “us versus them” mentality. One may extend pity to his or her opponent without being challenged to truly understand and value his or her opponent’s strengths.
In most school experiences, we often ask the smaller question: “How can we cultivate better sportsmanship within competition structures?” Competition remains an unquestioned paradigm when we think this way. Now imagine the kind of learners schools would cultivate if we asked the following larger question: “How can we create tasks in which our students learn to value each other’s contributions, and need each other in order to accomplish essential goals?” Kohn argues: “One of the most powerful motivators is not money or victory but a sense of accountability to other people. This is precisely what cooperation establishes: the knowledge that others are depending on you.”
Myth 4: Competition teaches us to overcome failure and take risks.
Many who believe in this myth often talk about teaching students how to be “great losers” and how to move forward to still reach your goals. Often, teachers and parents point to the importance of learning how to put yourself out there in the face of rejection, like in the college application and admissions process. It is certainly important to learn from your failures and take risks, but is competition with a winner-loser paradigm really able to cultivate the habit of mind of engaging and persisting through failure, throughout the course of one’s life?
Kohn captures the pitfalls of seeing life through a winner-loser lens when he states: “Living life to avoid failure is not the same as living life to succeed.” When we solely use competition as the primary means to motivate our students, they begin to operate out of fear of losing rather than a commitment to joyful learning. The highs of winning bring elation, but the lows of losing reveal just how much the winning was based on simply being “better than someone else”, without a true appreciation for the subject and understanding of one’s growth.
Let us explore the point of view of the “winner” to unpack this myth further. Like a familiar, cozy blanket, the winner covers him or herself with confidence in mastering the set of skills required by the competition task. From the point of view of the “loser”, a certain fear and anxiety from losing itself impedes the person from trying new things. If confidence is the “winner’s” security blanket, then losing is like a scary, paralyzing strait jacket. However, security blankets do not enable students to take healthy risks. What happens when a confident “winner” is put in a situation of challenge where the security blanket of “winning” isn’t enough to define success? He or she will end up paralyzed like the “loser” and avoid all situations where learning could occur-living life to avoid failure versus to succeed.
The goal of any learning experience should be to enjoy the learning itself and continue learning from both successes and failures. This goal allows students to pursue the beauty embedded in the task, discover the best selves they can be, and discover the best in each other. If our goals as educators and parents is simply to prepare kids to win (or to avoid losing), then they will shy away from taking healthy learning risks and be evaders versus learners.
The Purpose and Role of Competition at Two Rivers
Kohn offers a powerful lens with which to examine the competition experiences we offer here at Two Rivers. Do our competition experiences complement other experiences we give our students, to fulfill our mission to develop life-long learners?
Every year, Two Rivers holds an annual dance competition which undeniably sends an electric excitement through our school community pulse. Students in the upper grades learn the art and discipline of salsa, merengue, and bachata dancing, connected to our Spanish and arts-based curriculum. While they learn the intricacies of each dance step, they also learn the complex, transferable skill of communicating with their partners, drawing on each others’ strengths to complete a larger task that neither can do on his or her own. While there are partnerships that are selected to move to next levels of competition, every participant owns the criteria and strives toward excellence in the dance itself. Moreover, within a larger school culture that celebrates a love of learning and growth, the dance competition becomes more than a simple competition toward first place. It is a rite of passage that every participant enjoys together as a community.
This year, Two Rivers has also created an opportunity for students to sharpen and celebrate their problem-solving minds through weekly mathemagical wizardry tasks. Similar to the dance competition, there is an excited buzz each week when new tasks are announced and students are celebrated for tackling complex problems. In this experience, students participate on a voluntary basis and seek out this challenge by choice. Mathemagical wizardry tasks give our school community the opportunity to celebrate a love for out-of-the-box mathematical thinking, the making of new discoveries, and perseverant problem-solving that is truly magical.
As a culminating celebration of all the vocabulary we have learned this year, Two Rivers holds an annual Vocabulary Fashion Show. Based on the ideas found in the endearing story, Miss Alaineus and the Vocabulary Disaster by Debra Frazier, students create and model costumes that represent a vocabulary word they have enjoyed learning in class. Throughout the course of the week, every class celebrates the variety of costumes that come down the runway during in class-shows. Three costumes are chosen to go to the final vocabulary fashion show at the end of the week. In the early childhood grades, children participate in a parade of costumes at the final show, and middle school students serve as judges and costume “consultants” for the younger students. Students at every age level have the opportunity to participate in way that fits their developmental needs.
As a community of parents and teachers, we are constantly learning together and from each other as we navigate each year and look back to shape our course ahead. We continue asking ourselves and each other what is at the heart of every experience we give our students. From these important conversations, we have found that while many costumes in years past were beautiful and impeccably crafted, the range of our costumes reflected the difference in access our students have to resources for the project. Because of the on-going critical dialogue here at Two Rivers, we have chosen to be intentional about our focus and purpose for the vocabulary show experience. This year, we are emphasizing that the heart of this experience is a student-driven learning process of designing, creating, and bringing words and ideas to life. Parents are invited to partner with the school to facilitate a creative process, in which students take the lead and look around them to find everyday materials that can be used to represent a concept. We hope this renewed focus on student-led learning will actualize what is most important about any experience we give students at Two Rivers: A deep appreciation for the learning process itself and the power and wonder of transforming everyday bits and pieces into a completely novel idea.
Whether communicating through the language of dance, mathematics, or literacy-arts connections, students at Two Rivers enjoy the beauty of learning itself, motivated by a deep love for the subject and pursuing excellence and self-discovery. In the competition experiences at our school, the participants and the community audience value each person’s contributions and development as the heart of the learning experience. They also discover not only their own strengths, but the strengths and viewpoints of others that they can learn from. Kohn reminds us that “traditional competition transforms a potential partner into an opponent.” Using competition structures to promote life-long learning and collaboration is changing the tale of competition into one that meets 21st century needs. It is also helping our students develop the “deeper talents” that David Brooks articulates in “The New Humanism.” Among these deeper talents are: Attunement- ”the ability to enter others’ minds and learn what they have to offer”; Equipose-”the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s own mind and correct for biases and shortcomings”-Metis: ”the ability to see patterns in the world and derive the gist from complex situations”; Sympathy-”the ability to fall into a rhythm with those around you and thrive in groups”; and Limerance-”the ability to enjoy moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in the joy of learning.” Competition in the 21st century demands a collaboration and more complex and meaningful criteria for excellence, both which support the development of these deeper talents in our students.
Concluding Thoughts and Essential Questions to Keep Asking
The results of unpacking rarely examined myths about competition should not lead to an immediate discarding of all forms of competition. It should however, lead to a much more important question about how we define success for our students and what types of formal and informal experiences we give them to become empowered learners. How can we develop the type of learners that take healthy risks and seek out challenging experiences, not for the sole purpose of winning, but for the deep and transferable learning that it cultivates?
Replicating competition structures without thoughtful examination promotes a continuous fixed mindset about winning and losing. Analyzing how and why we use competition reflects our own growth mindset in redefining success for our students. Our own mindsets, in turn, help our students develop growth mindsets needed in a world that is rapidly changing. In her work on growth versus fixed mindsets, Carol Dweck reminds us that “success is not measured by being a winner or a loser, but by whether you are a learner or non-learner.” In determining whether competition is a vehicle or obstacle for learning, we must ask ourselves what we actually want our students to learn, and what we want them to be able to do with that learning when they leave our school walls and go forth into a 21st century world.
