And lo On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:18:27 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake thusly:

> It's extremely rare to hear something insightful being said on a talk  
> show. However, just once, I did witness such a thing.
>
> The following exchange occurred between some random parent, and the head  
> teacher of some obscure school:
>
> 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.

Let me ask this - do we teach our children to be competitive because it's  
a competitive world out there or is it a competitive world because we  
teach out children to be competitive?

Mike touches on most of my thoughts, competition is a shading. I've  
discussed this in a comment on my blog here  
http://flipc.blogspot.com/2011/09/truancy-equals-benefits-cut.html To  
summarise - a pupil gets points, the class points are a sum of the pupils'  
the year's points a sum of the classes'. If the year hits a total they get  
a prize picked by the highest class.

So consider a pure competition - a race. 10 entrants, the winner is the  
first to cross the line, everyone else are losers. The winner might win by  
being better, they might win by only competing against only those they  
know are worse than they; they might win because they threatened the  
others with physical violence, or they might have won because they spiked  
their drinks with a laxative. If the only thing being taught is that it's  
important to win all those methods are equally valid.

Instead of winners and losers, let's award points. 10 points to the first  
place and so on down the line. This works to a degree in that there's  
still some competition, but it does little to push the first placed racer  
and little to differentiate say a first place at 20 seconds with a second  
place at 25 seconds.

Simplistically one could base scores on the fastest time. 10 points for  
the 20 second racer, but only 8 points for the 25 second one  
(10-(25-20)/2)). That would encourage everyone, but in the wrong way. To  
maximise points everyone would run at the same speed and everyone would  
score the same maximum of 10.

Set a threshold and things differ. If the threshold is 20 seconds the  
first place runner gets their 20 points and so on down the line; but more  
importantly if they beat the threshold they get extra points. Stick  
together and everyone gets the same low point score. It becomes better for  
the year as a whole to try and beat the time.

So in this situation who's competing against whom? Who are the winners,  
who are the losers?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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