Competition from getting a good job, of maintaining the standard of living, to spending lavishly on holidays: its all around us now… not only in schools but everywhere there is a huge pressure to succeed over others. I guess the world is such today- full of competition rather it is in the strong grip of immense competition! The scenario today is that of a rat race, everybody running mad in order to fetch a position, a rank, a post, a stable platform. And this is taking a heavy toll on all of us, especially on the students of 21st century.

Today, there’s an unprecedented pressure on the student community to score higher and higher. Students are so busy these days (both in and out of the school) competing with each other that they really don’t know what their actual competencies are! There is an immense growth of “unhealthy competition” in the schools over these last few years.

I don’t say that competitions are not good, they are, but till the point they are meant to bring out the child’s best performance, help him to discover his capabilities and guide him to achieve a certain level of required excellence. But what is happening is a reverse of it- a child is, right from the beginning, competing to get a rank in that competition and not using that competition as a platform to know his strengths and weaknesses. Why won’t he as he keeps on listening from all of us all the time that “you have to come first”, “there is a prize for top three rank holders”, etc and etc.

The moment a child relates winning a competition to getting a rank into it, he dive himself into the ocean of unhealthy never ending competition. And if in the end he doesn’t fall into the category of so called “top ranks” his morale, his self confidence all goes down.

Einstein failed miserably in his school but later rose to be one of the most eminent physicists. Sachin Tendulkar couldn’t complete his education but is a successful man in his own right. There are many such instances when an average student is more successful than a brainy one. Then why do we always grade student on the basis of their ranks only?

I have been meeting many parents and students across the country and what surprises me all the time is the perception of intelligence for most of us. The word “intelligence” is just limited to the marks, percentages or rank a child is getting in the school. Parents are all the time worried about the ranks and performance of their child.

I have one interesting case to discuss here.

Once a worried parent asked me “How can I plan studies for my child Aaditya , he was brilliant till class VIII but now he is not performing that well. Can you please help me in charting out a study plan for him?” I asked him about Aditya’s academic performance record and the findings were amazing. Aaditya, a class X student got 98% marks in science, 95% marks in Mathematics, 82% in Social Sciences, 87% in Hindi and 89% in both English and Environmental Education in the final examinations of class IX. Instead of getting an overall of 90% marks in the final examination what was “indigestible” to his parents was his IInd rank in the entire class when he always secured the Ist rank in all his exams till class VIII. His parents can’t bear the agony of him getting a IInd rank in the class?

I went to further details and found out the actual cause of their worry was another student named Kashish who joined the school in class IX and is giving tough ‘competition’ to Aaditya. She got an overall 91% in the mid terms and a 92% in the final exams whereas Aaditya got 88% in the mid terms and secured a 90% in the finals.

“Amazing”, I said? “Is Aaditya not studying? Is a 2 % improvement over his performance as compared to a 1% improvement of Kashish’s performance (from the mid terms to the finals) is not worth recognizing? Does he really need to change his study plan?”

Aaditya should be given a “winning crown” as his performance to his own comparison over the two examinations has improved but what we are doing in this “rat race” is to compare two children of different abilities in each others’ comparison. Why is it so? We forget all the efforts put in by a student to get a marked jump over his last achievement rather criticize him for not jumping too far. Why?

We all have potential – each different from the other than why this comparison of ranks?

I do not think that the intelligence quotient (IQ) of Aaditya scoring 90 out of 100 is any different from Kashish’s scoring 92.

So the worried parents were so busy finding out the reason of their son getting a IInd rank in the class that they forgot the “stress” and “mental trauma” their son was facing at home and in the school to fight for a top rank. When actually he doesn’t have to … as he has already improved over his last performance he was a ‘topper in his own comparison’ already but what we all want him is to be a ‘topper over others’. Isn’t too demanding? Can’t we have competitions to improve our own performance level rather than focusing on what is others’ performance level is?

There is a need to improve this level of “unhealthy competition” from our educational system which is spreading “de-motivation” and “low morale” in the personality of students like Aaditya.

We as parents, teachers and counselors should strive hard to remove this belief that getting a rank in any competition is not the sole and only reason to take part in that competition. We should promote all competitions (whether academic or co-curricular) not with an end result of what a child will get as a rank in comparison to thousands of other participants but what he will get as an individual over his own actual performance level.

But the fact is that we all are also so much busy fighting for our own competitive requirements that we forget the trouble being faced by the students to score higher. Thousands of students have committed suicides in past three years owning to competition stress. Therefore, there is an urgent need to improve this level of “unhealthy competition” from our educational system which is spreading “de-motivation” and “low morale” in the personality of students.

Lets do something in this direction so that a child’s creativity, his individuality and his personality remains unaffected with the pressures and demands of this ‘red-blooded- competitive’ world!

- Kirron Kanjani