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| Help | 81% | 973 votes | Total: 1205 votes | |
| Hurt | 19% | 232 votes |
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Add to FavoritesCompetition, within reasonable limits, is not only healthy, but vital for a young person's readiness to succeed in life. To deny this is to ignore the nature of the world we inhabit: Competitiveness is a motivation in just about everything we do. It starts in the womb when we kick and stretch competing for space, until, finally, we lose the battle and have to emerge. It ends as we compete with actuarial tables and try to beat the odds that our longevity will not exceed those lifespan averages.
In between the two foregoing events, beginning with sibling rivalry, competing for the bathroom at home, convincing our little league coach to put us on the field - the list goes on and on - competition is life's inevitable challenge. It never ends, and everything we learn and work for is towards but one goal: success. Success, in turn, is achieved and sustained by becoming and staying competitive. That is because there are others who want what we want and need what we need. When those wants and needs become finite and not available to all, we must compete.
How does all this relate to the question on whether competition helps or hurts young people? Again, within reasonable and acceptable limits, young people need to learn the lesson of success through healthy competition. Yes, it hurts to fail, but there is a lesson in failure that goes back to the need to be competitive. A deemphasis of competition, therefore, can be far more harmful to a child, because the child may never develop a pattern of effort that is the first step to competition and the basis of success.
Young people are not stupid. They can see the existence and results of competition. Adolescents, in particular, know that their lives are fraught with opportunities to succeed, and that success is compared with others, who will eventually compete with them in the race to gain entry to a college or university, to find a suitable mate, and to achieve the well-paying job that many others also want. To tell young people otherwise, not only does them a disservice, but it also undermines the credibility of the parenting and educational system that owes them the truth.
Excessive, over-achieving, and pointless competition, on the other hand, can be stupid and harmful. We have all seen the rabid parent acting out at a little league baseball game. Likewise, we have seen the embarrassment on the faces of their children, who, unlike their parents, know how pointless this overarching display of competitiveness can be. Unfortunately, over-the-top competitiveness has the effect of nearly guaranteeing failure, or, at the very least, achieving a short-lived sensation of accomplishment that cannot be sustained, because its means are too debilitating.
Healthy and reasonable competition - kept within the bounds of the young person's aptitudes, interests, and respect for others - helps our young. When they become adults, they must be able to compete in a national and global society where income and quality of life are determined by the extent of each of our contributions. Those who wish to contribute more must be able to compete.
Learn more about this author, Jerry Curtis.
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Hurt
"Why, when ahh wuzzh a boy, I had to fight for everything! I had to work, by golly! Nothing was handed to me!"
"Don't you come tellin' me you walked away like a sissy and expect me to handle yer problem for ya! You gotta handle it like a man and stand up for yaself!"
"Relax, honey! It builds character!"
This pseudo-dichotomy very closely resembles a similar debate that has been had here and in on-line and in-the-flesh exchanges for generations - that of rigor versus nurture. My disposition is the same for this conversation as it is in that discussion.
It depends. Yes, that is terribly assertive and bold of me. Seriously, however - it really does depend. As is the case in every life-sustaining system that I can conceptualize (or recall), moderation is the answer. You have too much or too little of one thing and the same of another, and you change - the system has been replaced.
Okay, if I continue with that approach, readers are going to fall asleep at their terminals. My point is that it is your objective that shapes your plan. If you want your kid to be an aggressive, type A, every (man) for himself, go-getter who will one day lead his team or his army to victory, then competition will certainly need to be a significant component of the shaping of his psyche. And if that is all you want for him, or, more to the point, if that is all he wants for himself, then competition helps that particular young person.
On the other hand, if you are looking to nurture a more empathetic, objective, sensitive, and perhaps not so driven person, you'd want to steer clear of tasks and goals that have winners and losers. You're inclined to focus on cooperative learning and living, and have a perspective that includes everyones opinions, needs, and strengths.
Clearly, especially in the formative years, going to the furthest ends of either extreme can be predicted to do much more harm than good. You don't want a raise a person to be a boorish, arrogant, mean, aggressive, selfish demagogic tyrant. Nor, however, can one have a clear conscience by raising a placating, wishy-washy, unambitious, nervous, fearful, uncertain pushover.
So, while my assertion that "it depends" may, at first blush, put me in the latter camp, I think you can see that either extreme is hazardous, and the answer is in fact somewhere in the middle. SOME competition is good. It builds character, confidence, drive, and social skills. Too much does JUST THE OPPOSITE.
It is all about balance.
Learn more about this author, Stanley W. Shura.
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