Many children have a hard time academically succeeding in school. Some people argue that this is partly to be attributed to the competitive environment prevailing in most schools with common grading systems. Proponents of this line of argument claim that children are constantly exposed to pressure to compare themselves to their classmates. Conventional grading methods make it tempting for many students to define their own success in school based on their superiority or inferiority to their fellow students in terms of grades. If A is better than B, many students assume that this automatically means that they are also doing better or worse in general. Proponents do not only see issues in the grading system, however, but also in the way how different types of academic performance are evaluated and weighed differently, albeit being equally as valuable. For instance, some students may feel uncomfortable speaking in class, hindering them from proving their knowledge, while others might struggle more with written exams. The unequal honouring of those types of performance may leave students who excel in the one type but have difficulty with the other questioning their abilities, when they find out that other students get rewarded more than them, even though they put equally as much effort into their school work. Alternatively, some suggest other forms of evaluation which focus more on the students’ individual efforts rather than the final results, avoiding comparison and competition among students.
However, that criticism of schools’ competitive environment is not uncontested. Opponents of the abolition of competition in schools contrarily argue that it benefits and encourages students to achieve academic success. They claim that through competition students feel more motivated to achieve good results in school, driven by the wish to best their class mates. Some support this notion by referring to the mechanisms of the economy, which are also based on competition and have proven to work very well.
I personally believe that both sides have their valid arguments. While competition does tend to drive people to put more effort into their work, it is also important to bear in mind that excessive comparison can become quite harmful, especially to children. I argue that we should find middle ground between both sides. We should rethink our ways of evaluation in schools to avoid unequal recognition of academic performance, and appreciate students’ individual efforts more on one hand, while still allowing for some competition to maintain motivation among the students on the other hand.