>> Teacher: We don't perform competitive activities at our school.
>> Parent: Don't you believe in /challenging/ children? Don't you believe
>> in setting goals that will stretch them?
>> Teacher: We do believe in presenting children with strong challenges.
>> However, we believe it is important for children to learn that their
>> success doesn't have to come at the expense of anybody else.
>


Think about it. In a competition, you win by making somebody else lose.

If you think about it, that's perhaps not a very good life lesson. Do we 
really want children growing up thinking that the way to get ahead in 
life is to put other people down?

Competition isn't about being the best that you can be. It's about being 
better than everybody else in the competition. For some, that might be 
an impossibly difficult task. For others, it might be so ridiculously 
easy that it's no challenge for them. And then there's the people who 
start thinking "well if I can't get better, is there a way I can make 
everybody else get worse?"

This teacher's idea was that each child should have an individual goal 
which is meaningful to them, and which they work towards. One person's 
challenge might be a walk in the park for somebody else, but that's not 
what matters. It matters whether *you* have goals that stretch *you*.

And the other part is, by doing things non-competitively, if you do 
well, it doesn't make anybody else do less well. You don't have to 
"beat" somebody else to achieve your own goals. And that's arguably a 
much more positive way to approach life.

At least, that's what *I* took away from the exchange...

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