On Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:27:48 +0200, andrel wrote:

> Just a quick note: competitiveness is partly cultural. In some countries
> students compete with every other student and the percentage of students
> that pass is fixed. In other countries you pass if you meet a certain
> level.

I think competitiveness is part of human nature.  Competition to find the 
'best' mate, for example - something that drives the race to continue.

Jim

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>> Think about it. In a competition, you win by making somebody else lose.
>
> Of course, the real world is competitive. What you have done, by denying
> the existence of competition is sent someone into society who is
> ill-prepared to deal with that society.

I think anybody who takes it to the extreme of /denying/ that life is 
competitive sometimes is, at best, misguided.

In my humble opinion, the society I see around me is too competitive. 
There's too much emphasis on beating somebody else as a way to get what 
you want. I think it's very valuable to teach children (and anybody else 
who'll listen) that your victory doesn't always have to come at the cost 
of somebody else's defeat. Indeed, sometimes your gain can be 
*everybody's* gain.

True, sometimes it can't, and you need to understand that. Sometimes 
there can be only one winner. But it doesn't always have to be that way.

> Learning competition means understanding that you will not always come
> out on top. It's about learning to be fair to others. It means giving
> the other side due consideration. I for one welcome competition in our
> schools.

No, that's "cooperation". "Competition" is where you disregard everybody 
else and beat them out of the way by any means possible so that you get 
what you want.

> That statement by that teacher is dangerously ill-conceived, rather than
> insightful.

The sentiment can be taken to unhealthy extremes. Considering only the 
statement I witnessed, it's not really possible to say whether they took 
it that far or not.

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> Just a quick note: competitiveness is partly cultural.

I hear China and Japan have more cooperative cultures, whereas America 
is the stereotypically competitive one. I have no idea whether this has 
any basis in fact.

> In some countries
> students compete with every other student and the percentage of students
> that pass is fixed. In other countries you pass if you meet a certain
> level.

This is The Real WTF.

A student's grades should *always* be based on fixed criteria. Otherwise 
the grades only compare you to your classmates. Well guess what? 
Employers aren't interested in whether you're better than your 
classmates or not. (You're probably never going to see them ever again 
anyway.) They're interested in whether you're capable of doing a given 
job. A relative grade doesn't tell them that; an absolute one could.

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On 21/09/2011 04:58 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:

> I think competitiveness is part of human nature.

It is.

So is cooperation.

The trick is to find the correct balance between the two, IMHO.

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On 20/09/2011 09:30 PM, Darren New wrote:

> Somehow, I read that literally the first time, and thought of all the
> charities that collect $X for every mile you walk.

LOL.

Actually, I was thinking... Our dance school really, really needs air 
conditioning. Do you know what happens if you put 80 people in a room 
with no windows and make them do strenuous exercise for 60 minutes? Let 
me tell you: it gets *warm*, and most of all it gets *humid*. Not fun.

I was thinking, we could have a dance marathon to raise money to install 
a cooling system. Something like "you pay me X for every Y seconds of 
dancing I manage to pull off without dropping dead". We have several 
dances that severely tax all but the fittest dancers...

...yeah, I'm sure it'll never happen. Nice idea though. ;-)

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Am 21.09.2011 10:20, schrieb Invisible:

>> In some countries
>> students compete with every other student and the percentage of students
>> that pass is fixed. In other countries you pass if you meet a certain
>> level.
>
> This is The Real WTF.
>
> A student's grades should *always* be based on fixed criteria. Otherwise
> the grades only compare you to your classmates. Well guess what?
> Employers aren't interested in whether you're better than your
> classmates or not. (You're probably never going to see them ever again
> anyway.) They're interested in whether you're capable of doing a given
> job. A relative grade doesn't tell them that; an absolute one could.

A relative grade does ok, provided the candidate employees provide 
information on which school/university they visited.

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>> This is The Real WTF.
>>
>> A student's grades should *always* be based on fixed criteria. Otherwise
>> the grades only compare you to your classmates.
>
> A relative grade does ok, provided the candidate employees provide
> information on which school/university they visited.

Ideally, a grade B should be a grade B, regardless of where you got it. 
(Obviously there will always be a slightly subjective element to 
teaching and grading methods, but we should try to be as objective as we 
can.)

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Am 21.09.2011 12:41, schrieb Invisible:
>>> This is The Real WTF.
>>>
>>> A student's grades should *always* be based on fixed criteria. Otherwise
>>> the grades only compare you to your classmates.
>>
>> A relative grade does ok, provided the candidate employees provide
>> information on which school/university they visited.
>
> Ideally, a grade B should be a grade B, regardless of where you got it.
> (Obviously there will always be a slightly subjective element to
> teaching and grading methods, but we should try to be as objective as we
> can.)

I didn't contradict that fixed criteria for a grade are superior to 
variable grades; all I said was that non-fixed grades are also able to 
do the job grades were invented for.

That aside, I don't think that there is such thing as "ideal" when it 
comes to grades. They're just a kludge to rate a person's capabilities 
anyway. Your math grade doesn't tell much about whether you'd make a 
good accountant; your native language grade doesn't tell much about 
whether you'd make a good news reporter; your informatics grade doesn't 
tell much about whether you'd make a good system administrator, database 
engineer or software developer.

Actually, an employer's primary concern may often be stuff that's not in 
the grades at all: Soft skills. Are you good at communicating with 
others? Are you good at motivating yourself/others? How do you perform 
under pressure? Are you good at cooperation (teamwork)? Are you good at 
competition (marketing strategies)?

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On 9/20/2011 5:27 PM, andrel wrote:

> all functionality. What happens is that a very competitive person gets
> the top position by playing it hard. Everybody knows he got it that way
> and not by being the right person for the job. Then nobody wants to work
> with him (seldom a her) and nothing gets done.

Even if the person who gets to the top is not competitive, there is 
competition involved, it's just not as overt. That person got there 
either because he forced his way to the top (not necessarily because of 
competition, per se) or because he performed better in relevant areas 
and was awarded the job...

If you're destroying your competition, or stacking the odds in your 
favor by cheating, you are being anti-competitive. At that point, you 
are not competing, you are simply following your whim. But, it does 
appear outwardly as overt competition.




-- 
~Mike

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On 9/20/2011 10:58 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>
> I think competitiveness is part of human nature.  Competition to find the
> 'best' mate, for example - something that drives the race to continue.
>

I would argue that it goes far beyond human nature....


-- 
~Mike

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