Competition

Author: Madison Gannon

We commonly relate competition to sporting events. From trophies in little league baseball to Olympic Gold medals, we’ve grown accustomed to being rewarded for our competitive efforts in athletics so much so that competition has infiltrated all aspects of our lives including the economy, healthcare, real estate, parenting, education, and so on. The term is widely used in everyday discourse from which cable service provider has the most competitive rates to which school will help your child be competitive when applying to colleges. We tend to define it as a “friendly competition” but where competition exists there is always meant to be winners and losers, no matter the age.

In the onset of competition, we often hear “may the best man win” in competitive sports but we now also hear it in work environments and academic contests. This is important to note for two reasons 1) the phrase describes how our society glorifies individualism as opposed to community and collaboration and 2) the phrase uses competition as a gendered term reminiscent of who society deems this characteristic appropriate. Men are normally praised for being competitive, while women are seen as aggressive if they too show competitiveness. Despite this idea, society has normalized interacting with others in competitive ways. For instance, licensed therapist Jaime Bronstein recommends competition in romantic relationships to promote bonding.<sup>1</sup> Parents witness the unrelenting competition between their children otherwise known as “sibling rivalry.” People compete with themselves like with how much harder they can push in a workout or how much more productive they can be in their work. It is important to recognize as a cultural practice that competition is not a new idea, nor is it exclusively neoliberal. People and societies have always used competition as a way to distribute cultural and material resources. What does distinguish current times is that we are now living in a world where competition surrounds us in every facet of our lives.

What is at Risk with Competition?

It is common to associate some virtues, such as being hardworking, prudent, and resourceful, with the idea of competition. However, there is strong evidence to show that competition as a key social organizing practice causes more harm than good at both the individual and societal levels. For instance, the individualistic nature of competition fails to recognize the benefits of working in collaboration and having the support of a community. This practice promotes “every man for himself” mindsets which then stimulates feelings of isolation and loneliness. A group of researchers reported that “competition can itself be a significant cause of psychological ‘wear and tear’” and that “promoting the neoliberal idea that individuals need to fend for themselves in pursuing success and happiness may reduce their access to the curative potential of group life.”

Further, research from diverse disciplines ranging from evolution and ecology to anthropology and economics indicates that throughout history cooperation and social trust has been the defining feature of successful, thriving human societies. 

Countries where people report being happy and having life satisfaction are also found to rank high on cooperation, social trust and relationships.

Competition not only corrodes social trust and inhibits cooperation, it also as Alfie Kohn says, “turns all of us into losers.”

How Does Competition Relate to Neoliberalism?

Neoliberalism treats people as “entrepreneurial subjects” in that we live our lives making decisions that will help us grow which often includes competing with one other.<sup>6</sup> Within a neoliberalism framework, competition drives the markets through motivating people to be more innovative, stimulate growth, and achieve success, which will in return support society. So, in this mindset, competition is a healthy way to stimulate growth. Unlike laissez-faire, neoliberalism assumes that the government’s role is to set up structures that allow for competitive markets to exist and then work to make sure that the markets able to work freely and efficiently.

One of the initial proponents of neoliberalism, Friedrich Hayek lauded competition in a market as a great “discovery procedure” for the society because it enables us to discover the facts about things (as reflected in their prices), and allows us to see who is the ‘best’ person or object among an array of available choices. He also argued that competition incentivized individuals to seek out answers that do not currently exist.

This is reflected in many neoliberal societies that use competition to stimulate advancement. A good example of this was the United States participation in the Race to Space in the Cold War era. Jonathan Hearn, however, looked at competition beyond its economic impact and saw it as a social concept that evolves with the social structures that work within our ideology.

Hearn’s interpretation speaks to how the concept of competition has gone beyond the marketplace and has become a part of our everyday discourse. Not only are we competing with others in our education and careers, but we also compete with ourselves in our workouts, diets, and productivity.

To explore further explore the ways competition operates within Neoliberalism and the United States:

How Does Competition Operate in Education?

The business sector and with it many neoliberal ideals have influenced education to make schools more “efficient” and “effective” like we would think of in business models. As a part of this, competition has impacted larger policies like funding for schools and standardized testing but has also infiltrated more nuanced areas of education like instructional practices, evaluation systems, and mental health. Below are more in-depth discussions on how competition operates in education.

School Choice

School choice is an example of a competitive market because as educational reforms, like Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind, began to label some schools as ‘failing’, some corporate lobbying groups, policy makers, and parents started advocating for alternatives to the traditional public school. They claimed that the magnet, charter, and private schools should improve the education system by inspiring schools to remain competitive so families choose to enroll their children there. In reality, school choice further disenfranchises low-income families, places unsurmountable stress on teachers to keep their school competitive and increases the flawed system of testing and accountability.

Standardized Testing & Accountability Movement

Standardized testing was intended to be a way to measure the aptitudes and achievement of students and therefore the successes of their teachers and schools. Colleges and Universities use entrance exams like the SAT and ACT to determine the most promising students. Federal and state governments use school’s performances on standardized testing to determine funding, school grades, and teachers’ pay. Schools use test scores to track students. Essentially, the test day is competition day for students, teachers, and schools which comes with intense amounts of stress, teaching to the test, and standardized curriculum. The standardized testing movement is now clearly associated with increasing inequities in education and has utterly failed to show that competition in schools can lead to increase in quality and innovation in education.

Teacher Evaluation

With the premise of standardizing the education students receive, federal and state laws instituted teacher evaluation systems to determine teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom. Although these evaluations are supposed to be free of subjectivity, the standards for the evaluation and administrator bias often leads to unfair and damaging comparisons of teachers in the same building. Teachers can feel the pressure to outperform their peers, which may lead to a more individualistic approach to planning for instruction as opposed to a collaborative and communal effort. This is especially true in public school systems where teacher evaluations have been tied to teacher salary and other incentives.

Grading Systems

With the testing and accountability movement, school systems pressured teachers to have more data on their students in the form of formative assessments in order to track their learning gains throughout the year. Whether it be letter-based, numerical-based, or standards-based grading, students and their parents tend to place more emphasis on their score as opposed to direct feedback on their performance. Although many teachers discourage sharing scores, the first thing a student does when getting back a graded assignment is turn to a peer and compare scores. Grading systems, therefore, create a high stress environment in high schools as students compete for their class rank based on their GPA. Finally, grades-based competition while diminishing intrinsic motivation for learning also reducing learning to test based individualistic performances resulting in poorer learning among students.

Student Mental Health and Wellness

Since they see competition in daily activities, grades, and standardized test scores, students are experiencing immense pressure to perform well and therefore are developing test anxiety and a fear of failure. Scott Jaschik, a writer for Inside Higher Ed, reported a death of a 16-year boy in California who committed suicide after leaving a note that said “he couldn’t go on anymore because of the pressure at his highly competitive high school.”

Students are hyper aware of their test scores, particularly with the quick access of online grading systems, so much so that they begin to define their identity by their performance. This awareness begins early on in students’ educational career when they compare how many stickers they’ve earned for good behavior or how many books they’ve read in early elementary school, only to be heightened by the influx of testing as they progress through schooling. The competitive environments of testing value outcomes and products of learning opposed to the process. Additionally, testing prioritizes the work students do independently in place of social cognitive skilled developed in collaborative work environments. These have adverse consequences for the type of learning teachers facilitate in classrooms and the type of people students are when they leave the classroom. Unfortunately, the emotional and psychological distress that competitive environments place on our students is not discussed enough in conversations around achievement and success in schools.

To explore further explore the ways competition operates in education, check out:

References

Pajer, N. (n.d.) https://people.com/lifestyle/competition-healthy-relationships/. Is friendly competition the key to relationship bliss? Bet on it. People.

Becker et al. (2021). Neoliberalism can reduce well-being by promoting a sense of social disconnection, competition, and loneliness. British Journal of Social Psychology 60, 947-965.

The cooperative human. (2018). Nature Human Behaviour, 2(7), 427-428. doi:10.1038/s41562-018-0389-1

Tov, W., &amp; Diener, E. (2009). The Well-Being of Nations: Linking Together Trust, Cooperation, and Democracy. In E. Diener (Ed.), The Science of Well-Being: The Collected Works of Ed Diener (pp. 155-173). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

Kohn, A., Kohn. (1992). No Contest: The Case Against Competition. United Kingdom: Houghton Mifflin.

Becker et al. (2021). Neoliberalism can reduce well-being by promoting a sense of social disconnection, competition, and loneliness. British Journal of Social Psychology 60, 947-965.

Hayek, F. A. (2002). Competition as a discovery procedure. The Quarterly Journal of Australian Economics, 5(3), 9-23.

Hearn, J. (2021). Reframing the history of the competition concept: Neoliberalism, meritocracy, modernit. Journal of Historical Sociology, 34(2), 375-392.

Jaschik, S. (2018). https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2018/02/12/suicide-note-16-year-old-renews-debate-about-pressure-top-high-schools. Suicide note calls out pressure on students. Inside Higher Ed.