But my experiences as a teacher would indicate that practices which support competitiveness rather than cooperative learning environments-- on balance, I mean-- leave a greater percentage of students WORSE off than before.
Another reason to support change to a more cooperative model is that students don't wind up viewing future colleagues as "the enemy" when they need to learn how to work in teams.
There is healthy competition, and there is unhealthy competition. This is what I was trying (and failing) to say in my last post.
I took a really tough chem exam once. Everyone, including me, walked out of class with our brains dripping out our ears. We all thought we failed. When Mr. D. handed back the tests, I saw that I got an A. It turned out that I got a tough 20-point problem correct. I had made an educated guess on how to start it and then followed through logically. The grader wrote
VERY, VERY GOOD!!! on my paper.
Everyone else actually
did bomb the test. I turned my paper over and refused to discuss it with anyone after class.
IMO, posting my grade publicly or telling everyone that I got an A would have just added to everyone else's misery and may have made them resent me. Why would I want to do that? It wouldn't have accomplished anything positive.
I've held leadership positions at work for a long time now. IMO, if you want to be a good leader, you can't always be competing to be the top dog. If you do, you end up being a bad leader because you tell people that you don't care about them, and the example you set is to look out for yourself and not for anyone else or the organization's goals. This lesson is taught in school.
I'm reminded of something Iucounu said in another thread:
...I was routinely in situations where my skills obviously far outstripped those of my colleagues. I made a habit of not taking more than my share of credit for any work, giving credit to others wherever it was due, and always being available to help. I also would intentionally do some work to help others without expecting to get any credit.
What happened was that my avoidance of glory-seeking helped others relax, and the time I spent helping them not only impressed them first-hand as to my level of skill, but also made them grateful to me.
IMO, this is a better way to go.
Sure, maybe there's a correlation between competition and gender, but that doesn't mean that someone should blindly accept uber-competing as being okay because it's part of being male. Humans are intelligent enough to know that we can analyze our behaviors and consider the idea that an approach that feels good personally may not be the best one generally.
