Reacting to the proposal of scrapping the board examinations, a principal of a school from Delhi said, “This would decrease the competition between the students, and students will deteriorate academically and they would not brave the future competitions”. So, do competitions really help the students or reduce their capabilities?
Competition to a certain level is productive. Let say in a class of 30, the teacher asks the students to draw something beautiful. Most of the children, out of pure interest only will draw their best possible work. Instead, consider a situation where the teacher announces, that there would be a painting competition where students all over the India will be participating, and for so called motivation announces a laptop or a foreign tour as the prize. Half of those 30 will give up then and there. 12 among the rest will be pressurized by their parents to draw, redraw and come up with nothing less than a Van Gough. Only a 10% of students will survive the pressure and try to give it a serious try (most of their parents might themselves be from the artist background). Parents will buy them every possible colour, every kind of brush and even engage some art teacher for their fry. And when the child gets frustrated they will say, “You get so much comfort and advantage, where is the result (same as like their boss scolds them in their office)”. With a huge pressure on his shoulders the kid goes to the huge auditorium to find all other children accompanied by their families, armed with best possible colours, crayons and brushes. Finally he settles down and his shaking hands, throbbing heart manages to draw the do or die art.
The physical result without anybodies shock will be the same. Only 10 out of the thousands will get their names published on the newspaper, everyone (who has nothing to do with that competition) would be appreciating, that finally 10 talents have been found. But who caresses the rest thousands who have so called ‘lost the battle’, whose talents have been murdered at the first go. To the child he has nobody but to scold him, “I have broken the hearts of my parents who gave me all they could”. The gloomy face of father and mother would be imprinted in his mind. And how could you think he would ever get ready to go to the battle again (what he does then- take drugs or commit suicide or become the part of leg puller society who grows tall only when other bends)?
Not to forget about the rest 10. They are the heroes; they become the role models for their peers, expectation from them soar. And once they fail, the entire society leaves no stone unturned to prove that this was a genius by fluke. Not only this, entire society kills his esteem and makes him to doubt himself. And this group constitutes the half of the student suicide cases (IIT, IIM and suicide??).
To investigate the matter two behavioural researchers, Stephen Garcia at the University of Michigan and Avishalom Tor at the University of Haifa in Israel did an experiment. They asked 74 university students to take a timed, easy general-knowledge quiz which they were asked to finish as quickly as possible without compromising accuracy. Each student completed the test alone, but half were told they were competing against ten other people and the other half that they were competing against 100. All were informed that those whose completion times were in the top 20% would receive $5. The results backed up the psychological hypothesis. Students who believed they were competing against only ten people finished in an average of 28.95 seconds. Those who believed they were competing against 100 averaged 33.15 seconds.
Curious as to why mere belief that he was facing more competitors would alter an individual’s performance, the two researchers ran a second experiment. They asked students to imagine they were running a five kilometer race against 50 people and then against 500 (or, in half of the cases, the other way round). In both notional races the top 10% of competitors would get a $1,000 prize. The researchers told the students to rate, on a seven-point scale, how much faster than normal they would run in each notional race, with a one being slightly faster than normal and a seven being the fastest of their lives. The average value in the competition against 50 others was 5.43; in the competition against 500 it was 4.89—a result consistent with the other two parts of the study.
Everyone has a limit of productive stress, beyond which it becomes counterproductive. To say that scrapping some exam will decrease the feeling of competitiveness is nonsense, because the sense of competition has been inherently within the Animal Kingdom (Competition for food, for place, for mates). Above all we want our kids to grow as a good human being, to develop his innate potential to the fullest. After all no one has become a great man out of compulsion, pressure or lambast. Everyone has his own interest and life gives every possible support to grow it the best, so why should we be the leg pullers. Ultimately everyone wants an obituary, “He was the happiest man to have lived”.
P.S: What’s the remedy? Read an article like this or watch Taare Zameen Par and blame yourself to have wasted precious time from your competitive schedule.
Shivraj Rath
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