It's a human condition.
One of things I feel quite passionately about is allowing my children to be competitive in sport and education.
I'm going to possibly step over the PC line here, but I'll try to be PC about it.
How can any institution that teaches both sport and education give a message in sport 'be happy to participate' and in education 'achieve is good enough'. There must be some smarter people in the education system than me and to me it's bloody obvious. We are teaching people to be mediocre.
We have a success issue with certain races, in this country, when it comes to tertiary education. So we have quotas on competitive degrees for people of this race. Statistically this race has a similar intelligence bell curve to any other race, but we see a large proportion of this race not achieving at the same level as other races in tertiary education and therefore the professional workforce. It's not an intelligence issue, it's a cultural and training issue.
We are training all our children to participate and immigrants and earlier european settlers have more cultural capital in the social system we live in, and therefore have a greater depth of parental guidance on how to succeed in it.
Would it not be easier to encourage all people to succeed. Winning is good, not bad. There will always be a looser and that person should still be glad they participated and so should all the other people in the competition. Well placing people who were not first can also be proud. Immediate runners up can be proud but they should realise they almost had first. Do not tell them that what they did was no more important than last.
Telling the winner that the person who came last has just as much to celebrate is taking something from the winner - not giving something to the looser. There are many competitive disciplines, there will be many winners. By encouraging competition we... encourage competition.
I'm not overly competitive when I ride my bike because I'm not that fast, I don't have a particularly fast bike (42 big ring) and I don't have the time to train hard enough to be 'super fit'. Although I always give it a nudge when I have the chance with the philosophy that I'm doing this for exercise as well so make it count. This time to just enjoy my own being is precious - don't waste it.
Riding home tonight I was passed early, I recognised him, I had chased him once before. The ride was fast with a blustery but not strong northerly blowing. It took me 3 1/2 K's to catch him, passing him was hard and I knew we also had an upwind leg only 3k's away. Turning into the wind he had caught me and he pounced. Passing me with ease. We take different legs on a junction shortly after that and we gave it a nudge all the way to the intersection.
He was the winner, sure it didn't really matter. But it was important, it's the second time he's beaten me and I'll try harder next time.
Ride: K's 10.98 23:54, Avg: 28.10, Max: 47.9, Odo: 1330.
I'm going to possibly step over the PC line here, but I'll try to be PC about it.
How can any institution that teaches both sport and education give a message in sport 'be happy to participate' and in education 'achieve is good enough'. There must be some smarter people in the education system than me and to me it's bloody obvious. We are teaching people to be mediocre.
We have a success issue with certain races, in this country, when it comes to tertiary education. So we have quotas on competitive degrees for people of this race. Statistically this race has a similar intelligence bell curve to any other race, but we see a large proportion of this race not achieving at the same level as other races in tertiary education and therefore the professional workforce. It's not an intelligence issue, it's a cultural and training issue.
We are training all our children to participate and immigrants and earlier european settlers have more cultural capital in the social system we live in, and therefore have a greater depth of parental guidance on how to succeed in it.
Would it not be easier to encourage all people to succeed. Winning is good, not bad. There will always be a looser and that person should still be glad they participated and so should all the other people in the competition. Well placing people who were not first can also be proud. Immediate runners up can be proud but they should realise they almost had first. Do not tell them that what they did was no more important than last.
Telling the winner that the person who came last has just as much to celebrate is taking something from the winner - not giving something to the looser. There are many competitive disciplines, there will be many winners. By encouraging competition we... encourage competition.
I'm not overly competitive when I ride my bike because I'm not that fast, I don't have a particularly fast bike (42 big ring) and I don't have the time to train hard enough to be 'super fit'. Although I always give it a nudge when I have the chance with the philosophy that I'm doing this for exercise as well so make it count. This time to just enjoy my own being is precious - don't waste it.
Riding home tonight I was passed early, I recognised him, I had chased him once before. The ride was fast with a blustery but not strong northerly blowing. It took me 3 1/2 K's to catch him, passing him was hard and I knew we also had an upwind leg only 3k's away. Turning into the wind he had caught me and he pounced. Passing me with ease. We take different legs on a junction shortly after that and we gave it a nudge all the way to the intersection.
He was the winner, sure it didn't really matter. But it was important, it's the second time he's beaten me and I'll try harder next time.
Ride: K's 10.98 23:54, Avg: 28.10, Max: 47.9, Odo: 1330.
posted by Gardener at 9:11 PM
1 Comments:
I have the same misgivings about the teachings of our "participatory" society. One of the worst things about it is it means we are bringing up kids utterly unable to cope with the business world when they hit it.
It is absolutely not good enough for a funds manager to tell his clients - hey he gave it a go in the stock market this year, sorry that he lost all their money because he wasn't the best.
Sure kids need to learn that "winning isn't EVERYTHING" - but they also need to learn that once participating doing the absolute best they can is a minimum. And that winning is better than losing.
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