Opinions are divided on whether or not the competitive nature of schools is beneficial for students. As far as I am concerned, competitions among students enhance students’ academic abilities, leading to better achievements.
Granted, one may argue that being too competitive may do more harm and good; for instance, result in children being less sociable. This can occur because as the amount of time spent on studying increases, the number of hours students could use to hang out with friends declines. This might cause not only mental, physical issues but also on the more extreme side, commiting suicides among juniors and teenagers. One example can be examined no where further than China, where high academic expectations are set putting unimaginable pressure on Chinese students. This has regrettably led to an uncountable number of teenage suicides.
From another point of view, a competitive nature in academies can foster children to thrive and achieve better grades. Competitions may even bring students together through group work, encouraging friendships and connections between young adults. Competitiveness
can even help in pushing students to think outside the box and be more ambitious. This is very advantageous and in most cases crucial to achieve life goals. Although high levels of contestability among students may cause mental health problems, this is not necessarily true. Whether or not children suffer from these issues can depend on the amount of support received from their institutions. Some schools do offer one to one sessions in order to allocate help to certain students in need, this could largely improve the children’s health condition, solving a proportion of concerns among parents and institutions. For example, in European countries where a lot of supports are available to students, the number of teenage suicidal incidents has decrease significantly.
In conclusion, although some people may think of competition in school as something negative, some of the problems associated with it could be solved via schools’ support. Therefore, my conviction on this is that the benefits of students being competitive outweigh the drawbacks.