Competitive Grading
Frank Dixon
Excerpt from
Transforming Education: A Whole System Approach to Empowering Young People and Achieving Sustainable Society
Competitive grading and competition in general strongly indicate humanity’s much lower level of intelligence, sophistication and wisdom compared to nature. The overwhelming force in a healthy human body, other healthy natural systems, and nature in general is cooperation. When the overwhelming force is competition, as in a body with terminal cancer, the system usually is declining or dying. The highest life forms, including humans, evolved to cooperate. A basic form of cooperation involves a mother caring for a child. But humans also evolved to form cooperative groups and communities. Those who did not gain the ability to cooperate probably often did not survive.
As discussed in the Well-Being of Society section of Global System Change, indigenous religions frequently were based on cooperation and unity with nature. This reality-based thinking enabled these groups to survive and prosper on Earth over the long-term. Humans often violated these religions when we pushed nature aside to build cities, domesticate animals and grow crops. Instead of ending the violations, new religions arose that said humans were separate from and above nature. But we are not separate from nature. We cannot survive apart from it.
As discussed in the Women’s section of Global System Change, the illusion of separation produced fear that needs would not be met. This created the belief in the need for competition. In this environment, those with greater physical strength, aggressiveness and competitiveness (men) often were more highly valued. When power is defined this way, men innately have more power. Many studies show that women innately have more wisdom, when it is defined as cooperation, empathy, whole system thinking, multitasking, relationship skills and intuitive wisdom. (These generalizations are irrelevant at the individual level. Everyone is different. All men and women have power and wisdom. There are many wise men and powerful women.)
The belief in separation from nature and the need for competition are foundational components of our flawed economic and political systems. As discussed throughout Global System Change, achieving sustainability and real prosperity requires greatly enhanced cooperation and wisdom in society. Recognizing this will help to elevate women to a position of true equality with men. As noted, women innately manifest greater cooperation and wisdom than men. As a result, greater valuing of these qualities will cause greater valuing and honoring of women.
While our flawed systems overemphasize competition, human society largely is cooperative. For example, in competitive team sports, the winning team often is the one that cooperates most effectively. A less skilled team that cooperates well frequently can beat a team with more skilled players who do not cooperate as well. The same is true in business. The most successful companies usually are the ones that are managed most effectively. Good management largely involves maximizing cooperation within the company, in the supply chain, and with customers and other stakeholders. In other words, even in competitive environments, the team, company or group that cooperates most effectively usually wins.
The idea that human society is competitive largely is an illusion. If each human interaction were labeled cooperative or competitive, probably over 99.99 percent of interactions would be cooperative. Even at a one percent level of competition, society quickly would descend into anarchy. For example, if each person hit every hundredth person they passed on the street or tried to rob every hundredth store they entered, society quickly would fall apart.
Social skills are the most important skills needed to succeed in life. Gaining these skills mainly involves learning to cooperate and get along with others. It also includes learning to understand and manage emotions. Good social and emotional skills not only are important for life success. They also enhance academic performance and the ability to learn. Anxiety, anger, fear and other negative emotions can strongly inhibit or block students’ ability to focus and learn. As a result, many schools in the US have implemented social-emotional learning programs.[i]
Psychological or noncognitive skills and traits often are better predictors of life success than academic performance measures. They include self-awareness, self-restraint, persistence and the ability to cooperate effectively. These skills and traits sometimes are collectively referred to as emotional intelligence. Many studies have shown that people with higher noncognitive skills or emotional intelligence have longer marriages, more successful careers, better physical health, and fewer psychological problems.[ii]
True success in life also often requires high self-esteem. This is gained in large part by having the sense that one is able to make a unique, positive contribution to society. As discussed below, competitive grading often substantially degrades social skills, self-esteem and the ability to find one’s unique, most fulfilling path in life. To measure and rank children on less important skills (i.e. academic and intellectual), we severely degrade the most important qualities and skills needed for success in life. This is not rational.
Global System Change extensively discusses the essential need to evolve economic, political and social systems into sustainable forms to achieve sustainability and real prosperity. This largely means emulating nature by making systems more cooperative. If we teach children cooperation, we will strongly promote a more cooperative, sustainable and prosperous society. If we continue to teach them competition, we will help to perpetuate our competitive, unsustainable systems and the rapidly growing environmental and social problems that result from them.
However, teaching children cooperation and self-empowerment would threaten current fear-based, competitive, authoritarian systems. As discussed above, testing and competitive grading teach children that their value is based on someone else’s opinion of them. Competitive grading often lowers self-esteem and conditions young people to depend on and obey authorities. This enables the perpetuation of gross injustices in society, such as business control of government and theft of the public wealth through corporate welfare.
Enhancing and protecting the well-being of children and society demands that we greatly lower competition and increase cooperation in education. Competitive grading definitely is not needed to educate children effectively. One could make a strong case that competitive grading makes it impossible to achieve truly effective education that maximizes the well-being of individuals and society.
This section summarizes problems caused by competitive grading and more effective ways of assessing student learning. Problems relate to self-esteem, social skills, inaccurate measurement, motivation, productivity, teacher-student relationships, suppression of minorities, and public deception.
Self-Esteem
High self-esteem is one of the most important qualities needed for success in life. It sometimes is inaccurately equated to self-delusion, selfishness or arrogance. But self-esteem does not involve pretending that one is perfect or focusing exclusively on self. Self-esteem is similar to self-compassion. People with high self-esteem compassionately acknowledge their mistakes, and then move on with life. They do not condemn themselves for being imperfect. Self-esteem or self-confidence enables people to focus more on others, rather than obsessively seek to meet their own needs, as people with strong senses of inadequacy or low self-esteem often do.
People with high self-esteem believe that they deserve a good life and generally will not settle for less. But those with low self-esteem, perhaps because they were hit as children, frequently feel that they do not deserve a good life. As a result, they often settle for less. They tolerate boring jobs, abusive or unloving relationships, and harmful behavior, such as overeating or other addictions.
Teachers and schools usually have a large impact on children’s levels of self-esteem. As discussed in relation to IQ above, each person has unique interests and skills. Identifying these and building one’s life around them usually produces the highest levels of self-esteem, satisfaction and true success in life. This is how individuals function in the virtually infinitely more sophisticated and sustainable systems of nature.
Each living component of nature is intuitively or instinctually guided to do what they are best adapted to do. This enables them to reach their fullest potential. When each individual is guided and coordinated by the virtually infinitely greater intelligence of nature, there is someone or something to do everything and everything gets done. This is indicated by the vast beauty, symmetry, coordination, efficiency, resilience and longevity of nature. In nature, all unique interests and skills implicitly are valued and utilized. But this is not what happens in our vastly less sophisticated human society.
Education follows society. Education systems are structured in ways that people believe will benefit society. Since the 1980s, deregulation and public deception largely have shifted the focus of US society from doing what is best for society to doing what is best for business and the economy. This is partly reflected by shifts in curriculums. As noted, under education reform, liberal arts and vocational courses often were reduced, while core subjects were emphasized. Competitive grading of core subjects identifies skills and traits that are important to business, such as problem solving, written communication, obeying authorities and ability to follow directions. Young people who do well in subjects often go to the best colleges, get the best jobs and have the most financial success in life.
The system of grading and ranking students has been in place for generations. Many people take it for granted. They often assume competitive grading is a good system that would be difficult to change. But if one steps back, looks at the big picture and considers unintended consequences, they see that competitive grading of a narrow set of core subjects severely degrades society in many ways.
The purpose of education primarily should be to benefit individuals and society, not businesses and the economy. The education system should encourage and help young people to identify their unique skills and interests, and then build their lives around them. As noted, all or nearly all skills implicitly are valued in nature. Teachers and the education system in general should help children to understand that each person is different. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. This diversity of skills and interests makes human society beautiful and resilient. The education system never should create the impression that certain skills, and the people who possess them, are more valuable or important than other skills and people.
But this is exactly what our self-esteem degrading, competitive education system does. Competitive grading strongly teaches young people in emotional, often unconscious ways that some people are more talented and valuable. This small group deserves more success in life, competitive grading implies. This conditions young people to accept the gross financial inequality that exists in the US. As discussed in the Corporate Welfare and other sections of Global System Change, inequality largely does not result from fair allocations of wealth based on merit and hard work. It mainly results from unconstitutional business control of government and theft of the public wealth through corporate welfare.
Competitive grading implies that a certain set of skills is most important. Young people who are lucky enough to have these particular skills often have the most success in our business focused and dominated society. Many schools used to require students to walk up to the teacher’s desk to get their tests. The student with the highest test score would walk in front of the class first, while the student with the lowest test score would walk in front of their peers last.
This process of ranking students strongly implies and teaches various expectations about individual value and place in life. The first students in front of the class are shown to be more talented in areas that society implicitly values. Young people often understand that these supposedly more intelligent students frequently will go to better colleges, get better jobs, earn more money and attain leadership positions. The students ranked in the middle can expect less success in life. They might be working for the better students someday. The students with the lowest test scores being paraded in front of their peers might be seen as the least competent and intelligent. One might expect that they often would hold the least desirable, menial jobs and have the least success in life in general.
Most schools probably have ended these grossly demeaning practices. But even when grades are less publicized, the process of grading and ranking students produces similar, destructive ideas about value, self-worth and life expectations among young people. Schools should be places where children, teenagers and young adults can experience the joy of learning. Instead, they often are places where young people go to be judged and ranked against their peers. These environments can be extremely destructive to self-esteem.
Competition creates a situation where one person’s success is another person’s failure. With academic testing, there often is one winner, while everyone else implicitly is judged to have varying degrees of incompetence. Even winning (i.e. getting high test scores) frequently does not produce authentic self-esteem. Beating someone else can create temporary satisfaction. But it often leads to fear of not winning in the future. Students’ sense of self-worth is based on external judgment. This can create a sense of helplessness. Young people might feel that they must continue beating others to feel adequate. Competitive grading frequently creates an omnipresent fear of failure. Rather than providing self-esteem, winning provides temporary relief from feeling like a failure.[iii]
Young people who often receive below average grades can become depressed and discouraged with school. Children with learning disabilities might fear going to school and experiencing inevitable failure. Competitive grading can be especially damaging to young children (i.e. grades K-3). At this age, children frequently are not able to separate themselves from competitive outcomes. Poor performance relative to peers can have deep, long-lasting negative impacts during a time when children’s lifelong senses of self-worth and value in society are being formed.[iv]
Competitive grading and education benefit competitive business systems. By damaging self-esteem, children often appear to expect less from life. They are conditioned to obey authorities and tolerate boring jobs. In a society such as the US that places the well-being of business before all else, this degradation of young people might seem beneficial. That is a main reason why business control of governments and society must be ended. We must educate our children in ways that build up their self-esteem, not tear it down.
Social Skills
As noted, social skills (primarily cooperating and getting along with others) probably are the most important qualities needed for success and satisfaction in life. Teachers and school administrators nearly always intend and take actions to ensure that school environments promote the development of positive social skills, foster learning, and encourage friendship and enjoyment among young people. These outcomes occur to some degree in competitive education settings. But competitive grading strongly limits these benefits and causes many unintended negative impacts.
School often is a child’s first or most important exposure to society outside the family. Children’s minds, values, and conscious and unconscious beliefs still are forming. In addition, children spend much of their waking time in school during these formative years. As a result, experiences in school strongly influence young people’s understanding of and expectations about society. Schools often are intended to provide nurturing learning environments. But children frequently experience something very different. With competitive grading, children quickly learn that they are being forced to compete against their peers. They will be judged and ranked relative to peers. And they will be rewarded or punished based on their performance. On a deep, often unconscious level, children can learn that they enter school with little or no inherent value. Their value largely will be determined and assigned by external authorities.
Through the judgment, ranking and reward process, children learn that there is a hierarchy of value in school (and by implication in society because school strongly conditions worldviews). Children implicitly, though unintentionally, receive the powerful implied but unspoken message, “You are here to be judged and ranked. Get used to it. That’s how the world works. Those who perform well implicitly are more valuable. They will be rewarded and probably have better lives. If your performance is average or below average, do not expect much from life. You must learn your place in the value hierarchy.”
Schools are intended to be places of learning. But this often is not the primary or most powerful experience in a competitive grading environment. Through powerful emotional experiences, children frequently learn that the main function of school is to judge and rank students. This can produce high levels of fear and anxiety. Competitive grading makes schools seem like dangerous places for many young people.
Standardized testing further increases anxiety, stress, fear, frustration and anger among students. As noted above, NCLB/ESSA requires standardized testing beginning in third grade. Some school districts are expanding standardized testing to K-2 grades. But many parents and teachers oppose giving multiple choice tests to children as young as four years old. Several experts state that this serves no educative purpose. Instead, it is developmentally inappropriate, excessive and destructive.[v]
Of course, no one intends that competitive grading teaches children that they have little or no inherent value, their value or self-worth is based on performance, and if their performance is poor, their value is low. As with hitting children, these ideas are not spoken or intended. But the deepest, most powerful and often unconscious beliefs are not formed through words or teachers’ intentions. The most powerful beliefs about self-worth are formed through emotions and experiences. The experience of being ranked poorly relative to peers can have a profound, lifelong negative impact on self-worth.
As discussed in the Hitting Children section, children frequently adapt to physically or psychologically harmful situations, such as competitive grading environments which teach them that their value is not intrinsic, but rather based on performance. Children usually have no frame of reference. They do not know what a noncompetitive educational environment is like. On an unconscious level, they often will assume, competition is the way of the world, I might as well try to make the best of it. They frequently will make friends, learn things and have some fun.
Many children probably learn good values at home, in church and in other locations. For example, they hopefully are being taught that all people are inherently equal, regardless of performance. But these good values can be overwhelmed by the destructive values learned in a competitive grading environment.
Grading and ranking young people is inherently counterproductive. It can degrade character and social skills in many ways. For example, competitive education teaches young people to see peers as obstacles to success (because one person’s success often is another person’s failure). The primary measured and managed goal of education often is to beat the other person and not be the loser. Competition can teach people that peers can be used to achieve goals. It makes people less likely to cooperate and share ideas and resources. It also tends to marginalize less skilled or intelligent people because they are not as useful for goal attainment.[vi]
Learning to see other people as obstacles to success, means to achieving a goal, or valueless due to low competence can severely impede the ability to cooperate and get along with others (i.e. social skills). Competitive grades effectively are rewards (high grades) and punishments (low grades). Using rewards can degrade character. For example, several studies have shown that using rewards to motivate children causes them to be less cooperative, compassionate and generous.[vii]
Some people argue that competition, for example in team sports, builds character. But this is misleading in some ways. For example, character building results in large part from learning teamwork. In other words, character development results largely from learning to cooperate, not compete, more effectively. Some people also say that competition builds character by teaching young people to win gracefully. This is better than winning arrogantly. But the process of segmenting society into winners and losers often is problematic. For example, an emphasis on winning can create false senses of superiority or inferiority. Masking one’s sense of superiority behind graciousness does not enhance character. Competition also can create a desire or willingness to do whatever it takes to win. All of these results of competitive grading can substantially degrade character and social skills.
Many people go through competitive education systems and wind up as good, cooperative, highly ethical people. This largely reflects the complexity of humans and the human experience. Many internal and external factors determine how people will be affected by competitive grading.
As discussed below, all of the supposed benefits of competitive grading can be achieved more effectively through other forms of assessment. On balance, competitive grading is strongly negative. It creates senses of fear and inadequacy, even among ‘winners’ who might be beaten on the next test. It also lowers trust and makes people less likely to work together by conditioning them to see peers as obstacles to success. Degraded social skills caused by competitive grading leaves people less able to achieve a successful and satisfying life.
Inaccurate Measurement
Inaccurate measurement represents another problem with competitive grading. As business influence of government and education increased since the 1980s, there has been a greatly increased focus on quantitative measurement of students, for example through increased standardized testing. Quantitative measures of processes, inventory, costs and other metrics are critical for business success. But children are not products or inventory. They cannot be reduced to a few numbers or letter grades.
Emphasizing quantitative measurement creates many problems in education. For example, it focuses education on what can be easily measured, rather than on what is important. Education should emphasize and teach the most important skills, knowledge and character traits needed for success in life. As discussed, these skills and traits include high self-esteem, strong social skills, critical and creative thinking, ability to deal with complexity, and ethical and moral behavior. These most important skills and qualities largely are qualitative and subjective. As a result, they often are difficult to quantify and measure. For example, in assessing the quality of writing, it is easier to grade grammatical errors than to assess the degree to which writers evoke interest and excitement in readers.
Many tests emphasize memorization of facts and other information. It is easy to measure and grade memory retention. But this skill is far less important than other skills. For example, students often memorize information for tests that they will not need for the rest of their lives. After the test, the information frequently is quickly forgotten. Vast and growing amounts of information are available online. Access to this information already is easy. It will be even easier in the future. Rather than memorization, the far more useful skill is being able to locate and analyze information, and then draw rational, useful conclusions from it.
A qualitative assessment by a teacher who knows a student well can be far more accurate, complete, informative and useful than quantitative test results. Human beings are complex. We have qualitative and quantitative aspects. As noted, the far more important aspects are qualitative. Accurate qualitative assessments of complex humans only can be done by trained and experienced humans, such as teachers. This shows the high skill level and sophistication needed for effective teaching. The link between superior education performance and sophisticated, well-qualified teachers is strongly indicated by the fact that teachers generally are honored and well compensated in countries that lead the world in education performance, such as Finland.
However, a major focus or result of education reform in the US has been the suppression of teachers and teachers unions. Privatizing, standardizing and applying businesslike processes in education makes teachers less important and relevant. Emphasizing competitive grading and standardized testing often forces the qualitative and subjective out of education. In other words, it massively dumbs down academic assessment. Schools increasingly buy standardized teaching materials, tools and tests from education companies. Teaching frequently is rendered down to a simplified process of presenting and grading standardized material. This makes teachers expendable and more easily replaceable.
Current competitive grading and measurement systems help businesses by ranking students on qualities that benefit business. The process of ranking further benefits business by lowering self-esteem and conditioning young people to obey authorities and tolerate boring jobs. This once again shows the suicidal nature of our systems. To facilitate earning ever-increasing shareholder returns, businesses severely degrade education. This degrades society, which ultimately degrades business. To protect and enhance the well-being of society, we must shift the focus of measurement in education away from what benefits business and the economy to what benefits individuals and society. Ironically, shifting the focus from business well-being to the well-being of society is the best, and perhaps only, way to maximize the well-being of business.
Motivation
Many studies have shown that competitive grading substantially lowers the quality of thinking and motivation to learn. For example, external motivation, such as competitive grading, often creates fear of failure. This can lower internal motivation and interest in learning. Grading creates a preference for easier tasks to avoid failure. When no grades or rewards are offered, people frequently choose more complex, difficult or challenging tasks.[viii]
Grading lowers the quality of thinking by shifting the focus from what one is doing (i.e. the task) to how one is doing (i.e. performance). Young people often focus only on what is needed for tests, rather than on the whole subject. Students who are not graded frequently have better retention because they consider issues more fully without fear and make more connections in their minds.[ix]
Grading and rewards work best when tasks are boring. Offering rewards or grades often lowers performance when tasks are interesting and solutions are not obvious. Rewards frequently are used for behavior modification, such as forcing children to learn in school. Behavior modification strategies such as grading and offering rewards work best on people who are powerless, dependent, bored, infantilized and/or institutionalized.[x]
The incorrect position that grading is needed to promote learning appears to be based partly on a negative view of humanity. As discussed, some religious and conservative groups believe that humans are inherently flawed and lazy. Strict rules and structures are needed to force them to do the right things. This authoritarian view of reality apparently originated in religions that separated humans from nature, and then spread to business, education and other areas of society. The idea that people are flawed or lazy is used to justify strict discipline and controls. But as discussed, extensive research and observations of reality show this authoritarian worldview to be false.
Like every other creature in nature, humans have an innate desire to reach our fullest potential. This produces the highest level of life satisfaction, and therefore is a strong internal motivator. Saying or implying that people are flawed, lazy, incompetent or unable to reach their fullest potential through their own inner motivation severely stifles people, especially young people, because they are more vulnerable to these lies.
Children are naturally curious. They have a strong, innate desire to learn. Judging, grading and ranking students against peers will not increase the desire to learn. It will lower it. Grading often replaces the desire to learn with a desire to win. Young people who do well on tests might be motivated by the desire to win, in the same way that a gambling addict is motivated to play a game by winning money. The problem with motivating learning through grading is that this produces winners and losers. The losers often lose their motivation to learn. And the winners sometimes adopt the delusion that they are superior to others.
Competitive grading harms the overall motivation to learn among students. If interesting material is presented in an engaging manner, and if young people do not have major distractions or problems outside of school, they often will be more motivated to learn by the absence of grades.
Productivity
Reduced productivity is another problem frequently caused by competitive grading and competition in general. Many people believe that competition increases productivity. But extensive research shows that the opposite often is true. For example, many studies have analyzed links between competitiveness and achievement or productivity. Several studies analyzed competitiveness among business people, college students, airline reservation agents, and elementary school students. Each of these studies found that higher competitiveness was correlated with lower productivity or achievement. In a review of 122 studies, 65 studies found that cooperation promotes higher achievement. Only eight studies found that competition improves achievement.[xi]
There are several reasons why competition can hurt performance. For example, competitive people often waste time and energy thinking about other people’s performance or trying to prevent them from winning. Also, as noted above, cooperating with others effectively frequently is the most important requirement for maximizing productivity and achievement (i.e. winning). Perhaps the best example of how cooperation enhances productivity lies in nature. There is no waste in nature. Nature usually achieves nearly perfect efficiency and productivity. Productivity, creativity and virtually every other positive factor are essentially infinitely greater in nature than in human society. The overwhelming force in nature is cooperation. Therefore, to maximize the well-being of our children and humanity overall, we should strive to emulate the virtually infinitely more intelligent master that is all around us, within us and available through intuitive wisdom.
Teacher-Student Relationships
Competitive grading frequently damages teacher-student relationships. After parents, teachers often are the most important people in students’ lives, especially young students who frequently spend the whole school day with one teacher. Children often spend more time with teachers than parents. Teachers frequently represent children’s first exposure to authority outside the family. They strongly influence children’s perceptions of authorities and society in general. Teachers are intended to be allies who facilitate student learning and psychological development. This frequently occurs.
However, competitive grading creates an inherent conflict between teachers and students. The job of the teacher often is to focus on the negative by finding fault or errors. The teacher is the judge of the child. Teachers implicitly determine students’ value through grading and ranking. Competitive grading inevitably creates an adversarial relationship between teachers and students. Many good teachers work hard to overcome this and help children to succeed. But the requirement to judge and rank students can create fear of teachers and authorities in general.
Standardized testing makes the situation worse. Teachers often used to provide more qualitative assessments and constructive, nonjudgmental feedback to students. But the increased focus on standardized testing frequently lowers qualitative assessment. Students’ performance largely is determined by grades. In effect, the complex, qualitative, subjective human being is reduced to a few numbers and grades. This further distances teachers from students.
Competitive grading or grading on a curve also can mask bad teaching. If a teacher does a good job of explaining a subject, all students learn the material and they do well on tests, this should be seen as ideal. But competitive grading implies that it is bad. Many high scores often are interpreted to mean that the class is too easy. This creates a strong incentive to ensure that some students do poorly. In some cases, many low scores are considered to be positive. It implies that a teacher is tough. When in reality, it probably often means that the teacher simply is bad. Poor teaching caused students to not understand material and get low grades.
Teacher-student relationships are critical for learning, especially with young children. Competitive grading inevitably damages these relationships by making them adversarial. Far more effective ways to assess students are discussed in the Education Solutions section below. We must implement assessment methods that strengthen teacher-student relationships, rather than build distrust and fear of teachers and other authorities.
Suppression of Minorities
Another huge negative impact of competitive grading relates to African American children and other minorities. As discussed, white children frequently received higher grades than African American children. White racists sometimes claim that this results from innate deficiencies in African Americans. But as noted, poor academic performance occurs mainly in low-income communities. The lower performance of African Americans nearly completely relates to factors outside of school, such as poverty, violence and not having basic needs met. It has nothing to do with lower intelligence or competence. White children often arrive at school with more reading and other skills and more stable home lives. This is why they often outperform, not because they are smarter.
African American young people sometimes do not try to perform well in school. This is understandable. Why should they submit themselves to the constant humiliation and degradation of being ranked less intelligent or less competent than white children, when the ranking has nothing to do with intelligence or competence? Even if it were better understood that poor academic performance relates more to home life than intelligence, this still could be humiliating. Why should African American children have to expose to their peers that their parents perhaps cannot find jobs in our white dominated society? If we did not shame African American and other minority children with competitive grading, they almost certainly would try harder in school.
Misconceptions and Deceptions
There are several misconceptions or deceptions that facilitate the continuation of competitive grading. For example, some people argue that, while the vast majority of human interactions are cooperative, society still is competitive in many ways. Therefore, competitive education prepares students for a competitive world. Some people might say that competitive grading better prepares students to compete for scarce jobs.
Effectively addressing and considering this issue illustrates the need for a whole system approach. Education, the economy and everything else in human society are interconnected parts of one overall system. Small problems in various parts of human society often can be effectively addressed in isolation. But effectively resolving large problems nearly always requires a whole system approach. Regarding effectively competing for scarce jobs, one could first ask the larger question, why are jobs scarce? As noted, large publicly traded companies are structurally required to grow forever. To achieve this, they often give money to politicians, who then implement rules and regulations that benefit large companies. This helps them to put small companies out of business and severely degrades local economies.
Also, to grow forever, companies often compel fewer people to do more work. Improving productivity lowers the number of employees needed. By improving labor productivity, sending jobs overseas and taking other actions, companies can create scarcity of jobs. Having more people looking for jobs than there are jobs available gives companies great power over current and prospective employees. When job opportunities are limited, companies can force employees to take lower wages and benefits, work longer and harder, tolerate tedium, and accept other suboptimal employment conditions. Job scarcity is not necessary. It exists in large part because scarcity of jobs helps companies to achieve ever-increasing shareholder returns.
Job scarcity can be ended once citizens stop allowing themselves to be deceived and divided into debating factions (such as conservatives and liberals), take back control of government from business, and refocus society on doing what is best for all citizens, rather than the small group of wealthy people that controls government. Once this occurs, several important changes can be made. As we emulate the vastly greater sophistication of nature, we will rebuild local economies, in part by holding companies responsible for all negative environmental, social and economic impacts. Holding companies fully responsible by integrating all real external costs into prices will improve pricing accuracy. As discussed in the Trade, Scale and Competitive Advantage section of Global System Change, accurate pricing often will show that local production is the low-cost option. This will create more local jobs and local business ownership.
Also, as the US uses its wealth to benefit all citizens, we will establish a social safety net that is comparable to other advanced democracies. For example, Germany and other manufacturing leaders provide healthcare, retirement and other benefits to all citizens through government. As US companies no longer are required to provide benefits that are provided by government in nearly all other developed countries, the pressure to lower benefit costs by having fewer employees doing more work will decline. As a result, companies will be able to have two employees working 30 hours per week, instead of one person working 60 hours, for example. As these sustainable economic changes are made, job supply can match demand and job scarcity can be virtually eliminated.
However, setting aside economic changes that provide employment for everyone who wants or needs a job, one could argue that competitive education does not best prepare young people for competitive job markets. There generally are two hurdles that applicants must overcome to get jobs – skills and compatibility. Compatibility (i.e. the ability to get along with supervisors and co-workers) often is the more important factor, assuming that candidates have basic required skills. Competitive education frequently degrades self-esteem and the ability to cooperate and get along with others. Students educated in a cooperative educational environment (i.e. no competitive grading) often have higher self-esteem, better social skills, and equal or better academic skills (partly because competitive grading lowers interest in learning).[xii] As a result, young people educated in a cooperative environment frequently will be better prepared to compete for jobs in competitive labor markets. This applies in virtually all areas of human society. As discussed in the Implement Freedom-Based Education section below, cooperative education more effectively prepares students to achieve success and satisfaction in life.
Another misconception about competitive grading is the idea that it works. Competitive grading has been around for a long time. During this time, the US became a world leader in economic and other areas. This implies that competitive grading is an effective strategy. There are several deceptive aspects to this position. For example, student assessment often was more qualitative when the US was a world leader in education. Education reform has increased the emphasis on quantitative factors. Also, competitive grading enhances the economy and businesses by lowering self-esteem and making young people more compliant. But it degrades individuals and society in many ways. In addition, just because something apparently works does not mean that it cannot be largely improved, as is the case with competitive grading.
Another deception involves the idea that it would be difficult to change competitive grading because it has been around for a long time and many people are used to it. But we must not let difficulty stand in the way of doing what is right for children and society overall. As discussed below, many schools successfully educate children without competitive grading. Experts have been studying and writing about cooperative education for decades. There are abundant models and experts to help implement an education system that does not put students in conflict with teachers and each other.
Effective Assessment
Ending competitive grading does not mean ending assessment of students. Assessment is critical. It helps teachers to engage with students, identify strengths and weaknesses, and ensure that students are gaining maximum benefit from the education experience. Identifying the optimal assessment approach cannot be done until the optimal education strategy is defined. This cannot be done until the optimal, or at least sustainable, society is defined.
As noted, education follows society. At a whole system level, the purpose of education should be to maximize the well-being of society. Currently, society implicitly makes the grossly false and suicidal assumption that maximizing the well-being of business and the economy maximizes the well-being of society. Following this incorrect assumption, education appears to be increasingly focused on maximizing the well-being of business and the economy. We must end the irrational assumption that maximizing business well-being maximizes social well-being. Instead, we must begin to actually measure the well-being of society. Economic growth supposedly is the means to the end of social well-being. But if we measure the means, they become the end goal of society.
The first requirement of a sustainable, prosperous society is survival (i.e. protecting life support systems). Without this, everything else is irrelevant. As discussed in the Well-Being of Society section, the next requirement is strengthening and protecting communities and social structures that enable individuals to prosper. From an educational perspective, this largely means ensuring that young people know how to get along with others and cooperate effectively (i.e. build strong social skills). Once environmental and social systems are addressed and protected, individual needs and well-being should be addressed. After basic needs are met, the most important component of maximizing individual well-being often is helping each individual to identify and develop their unique areas of interest and competence, and then built their lives around them. Along with building strong social skills, this probably is the most important aspect of a truly effective education system that maximizes the well-being of individuals and society.
All people are inherently equal. We all have varying strengths and weaknesses. As noted, the education system never should create the impression that one set of skills, and the people who have them, are more valuable or important than other skills and people. But this is exactly what our unintentionally destructive, competitive education system does. We implicitly honor and elevate skills that benefit business and other segments of society, while implicitly demeaning or devaluing other skills, and the people who have them.
Competitive grading is bad enough. But the takeover of public education by the private sector is far worse. As discussed in the Privatization section, the profit motive is incompatible with effectively educating children. Continued privatization, standardization and implementation of businesslike measurement and ranking processes will create the same disaster in the education area that we have in the healthcare area. The well-being of children and society demands that we reverse the private sector takeover of public education. Children are not machines that can be measured and managed through mechanized, standardized processes. Once privatization of public education is reversed, we can begin to phase out competitive grading and replace it with far more effective and beneficial assessment processes.
The most important aspects of humans are qualitative, not quantitative. Qualitative aspects, such as self-esteem and social skills, often are difficult to measure. They generally cannot be assessed with standardized tests. Proxies sometimes can be used to estimate difficult to measure factors. But generally, the qualitative aspects of humans must be qualitatively assessed by another human, such as a teacher.
Many schools effectively use noncompetitive assessment approaches. Experts often help schools to implement them. An article by Alfie Kohn, called The Case Against Grades, describes some of these approaches.[xiii] One of the most common and effective is to replace letter and number grades with narrative assessments and conferences with students and parents. Adding comments or narratives to grades frequently does not work. When grades are present, students often ignore comments. When only comments are present, students usually read them. When course grades are required, some teachers use an intermediate approach. Grades are not placed on daily assignments and tests. Only qualitative feedback is provided. In this way, students do not feel judged every day.
Another highly effective strategy discussed by Alfie Kohn involves allowing students to provide input on assessments and grades. For example, teachers often discuss the purpose of assessments and allow students to make suggestions about assessment strategies. This frequently gives them a sense of ownership about the process and greatly increases interest in learning. Also, when course grades are required, teachers sometimes allow students to provide input on what grade they should receive. Many teachers report that students almost always suggest the same grade that teachers would have chosen.[xiv]
High performing students sometimes do not like the elimination of competitive grading. This takes away their opportunity to beat other students in class. However, over time, they usually adapt and learn more because the pressure of grading is gone.[xv]
Some people argue that competitive grading is needed for college admittance. But this often is not true. Many students from grade-free high schools get admitted to colleges based on narrative reports, recommendations, essays and interviews. This material provides a much fuller assessment of students than grade-point averages. Many colleges report that students from grade-free high schools are better prepared for college because they are more motivated and proficient learners.[xvi] In addition, even if some grading is used in high school to facilitate college admittance, competitive grading is not needed before high school in grades K-8.
Teachers who replace competitive grading with qualitative assessments report many benefits. For example, teacher-student relationships usually improve because the relationships become far less adversarial. For many students, writing ability improves more quickly and lessons are retained longer. Also, many teachers report that students are more enthusiastic about going to school. Instead of being judged, they can enjoy learning in a much lower stress environment.[xvii]
A book by John Schindler, Ph.D., called Transformative Classroom Management: Positive Strategies to Engage All Students and Promote a Psychology of Success, discusses competition and cooperation in the classroom. The book suggests many strategies for implementing more cooperative learning environments, and the large benefits that these approaches provide. Dr. Schindler also discusses how some competition, or at least discussion of competition, in the classroom can be beneficial. It can help young people to more effectively handle competitive situations outside of school.
Dr. Schindler notes, “Students should receive guidance to see that the feelings that competition brings out are normal and predictable but not necessary. Feelings such as worrying about losing, needing to win to feel good about oneself, needing the drama of the competition to feel interested, or being so worried about the outcome that one looses focus on the process are all normal but ultimately dysfunctional habits of mind. We must help students recognize these normal tendencies and replace them with more functional thinking to guide their choices and define their state of mind during a competitive experience.”[xviii]
Robert Brooks, Ph.D., author of The Self-Esteem Teacher, is another leader in this field. Dr. Brooks has written extensively about how to establish more cooperative learning environments that promote self-esteem, motivation and resilience in students. He suggests several approaches in an article called How Can Teachers Foster Self-Esteem in Children?[xix]
To ensure that classrooms are self-esteem enhancing environments, Dr. Brooks states that it is important to recognize that children learn differently. To maximize success, teaching and assessment approaches should be adjusted accordingly and accommodations made, especially for children with learning problems. To manage perceptions that giving easier assignments and assessments to some students is unfair, he advises discussing fairness up front with students. The teacher could explain that some people are better at math, reading or running, for example. People who are skilled in a particular area will have higher goals and expectations.
Dr. Brooks also emphasizes that it is important to give students a sense of ownership, control and responsibility for their success in school. This greatly increases motivation and commitment to learning. To provide a sense of control, if a student is having difficulty learning something, a teacher might ask the student which learning approaches might be most helpful, and then try these approaches. Another option for giving students greater senses of control is to provide, for example, six homework problems, but only require that four be done. This allows students to choose which problems they do.
To improve self-esteem, Dr. Brooks suggests giving students opportunities to contribute or help in some way. For example, older students might read to younger students. Children might care for plants, hang art in school, or paint murals. Teachers also might establish cooperative learning groups. This gives students opportunities to learn teamwork and make a contribution to the group.
Another important action involves minimizing fear and embarrassment resulting from making mistakes. Dr. Brooks suggests discussing this up front with students. Teachers could encourage students to see mistakes as learning opportunities. Also, rules could be established about how teachers and students should respond if a student does not know an answer.
In The Self-Esteem Teacher, Dr. Brooks discusses how competitive grading can harm self-esteem and social skills. He emphasizes that self-esteem is enhanced by helping students to find their unique areas of competence, and then helping them to succeed in these areas. As discussed in the Education Solutions section below, instead of degrading self-esteem and social skills through competitive grading, schools should promote the enhancement of these important skills by implementing more social-emotional learning programs.
One of the most empowering, effective and beneficial assessment approaches is to essentially rank students against themselves, rather than other students. To achieve this, teachers work with students to identify desired levels of performance in particular areas, and then help students to improve. How they perform relative to other students largely is irrelevant. The focus should be on ensuring they are improving and attaining competence in key areas. This approach mainly relies on internal motivation, which usually is far more effective than external motivation. (As noted, external motivators such as grades often lower the internal motivation to learn.) This approach frequently is used in adult education classes. Adults often are not ranked against each other. The focus is on ensuring that each student makes progress and attains competency.
Teacher expectations frequently are critical to student learning. Students are much more likely to make progress and attain goals if teachers very clearly let students know that they believe they can succeed. To achieve success, goals must be reasonable and achievable. Teachers should set goals that are appropriate for each student. As Dr. Brooks points out in the above article, this does not require substantial extra work. For example, teachers do not have to develop separate education plans for each student. The most important requirement is that teachers, students and parents understand that each child has strengths and weakness, and then develop common expectations, goals and strategies for achieving goals.
It often is easier to hold all students to the same standard. But this is counterproductive and unfair. Expecting a child with weak math skills and little interest in math to perform at the same level as a child who loves math and does well in it insults and demeans the child with lower math interest and skills. Adjusting expectations and goals based on each child’s interests and skills allows them to make progress, successfully achieve goals, and build self-esteem.
Using qualitative, noncompetitive assessment approaches and adjusting individual goals based on student interest and competence often make teaching more difficult. It usually is faster to grade standardized tests. However, cooperative approaches will improve student-teacher relationships and frequently make education more satisfying for teachers and students. In addition to knowledge, effective teaching requires wisdom, compassion and empathy. As noted, caring for our children is the most important obligation of humanity. This makes teaching one of the most important jobs, if not the most important job, in society. Effective education requires ending the business-driven degradation of teachers and teachers unions. We must re-establish honor, dignity and attractive pay and benefits in the teaching profession. We also must ensure that class sizes are small enough so that teachers have enough time to qualitatively assess and assist each student.
Protecting Children
The self-esteem damaging impacts of competitive grading are compounded by the fact that grading occurs over many years during a time when young people’s lifelong senses of self-worth are being formed. Many children go through K–12 education with the same students. Year after year, they see the same groups of children getting high, mid-level or low grades. After a while, average or below average students might think, I’m not as smart as the kids who always get good grades. This can strongly condition them to expect and accept less from life.
Competitive grading teaches children that they will be judged throughout life. It frequently creates fear and makes the world seem like a dangerous place. Fear often strongly suppresses rational thought. To feel safe in an unsafe world, people often blindly cling to religious, economic and other dogma. Fear makes people highly vulnerable to deception. They become afraid to question authorities and injustices in society. This helps the small group that controls government and deceives the public about climate change, corporate welfare and other issues. But it severely degrades society.
We must not breed fear into our children through competitive grading. It is wrong to strongly imply that the interests and skills of one child are more important than those of another. A child who loves art and wants to build their life around it should not be made to feel less valuable than a child who loves math and wants to pursue a career in that area.
We have no right to rank our children against each other. Doing this shows the intense stupidity of humanity compared to nature. Implicitly insulting a child’s unique skills and interests is unintentionally horrible. Teachers can assess students in ways that provide information for college admittance, for example, but do not degrade self-esteem. A beautiful quote, often attributed to Albert Einstein, shows the irrational and highly destructive nature of competitive grading. “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.”
By honoring the uniqueness of each child, we will develop freethinking, confident and empowered adults. These young people will expect more from life. They will not settle for less. They will demand that government and the economy serve and benefit all citizens equally and fairly. Empowered young people might pose a threat to the small group of business owners that controls government. But this business group is unintentionally degrading society. For their own good, and the good of all people, we must end business domination of government, education and society. Empowering young people through the elimination of competitive grading is critical to maximizing the well-being of society.
It also ultimately will help to maximize the well-being of business. Eliminating competitive grading will create a more confident and competent pool of potential employees. Enhanced ability to think critically and systemically often will enable these young people to suggest and implement business changes that not only benefit business, but all other stakeholders.
Competitive grading does a poor job of preparing young people for the real world. It degrades self-esteem, social skills, the motivation to learn, the quality of thinking, and many other important factors. Competitive grading definitely is not needed to educate our children. It almost certainly is not possible to maximize the well-being of young people by educating them in competitive grading environments.
Our children are human beings, not machines. We must give them the dignity and respect they deserve by treating them like human beings. The essentially infinitely greater intelligence and wisdom of nature are based on cooperation. To maximize the well-being of children and society, we must eliminate or greatly reduce competitive grading in schools and replace it with wiser, more beneficial assessment approaches.
Frank Dixon is a sustainability and system change pioneer and leader. His extensive ESG experience showed that system change is at least 80 percent of the sustainability solution. As a result, he established the System Change Investing (SCI) and Global System Change (GSC) companies. He developed the first models for integrating system change into financial and corporate sector sustainability strategies. His SCI and Total Corporate Responsibility (TCR®) approaches provide the most advanced responsible investing and corporate sustainability strategies. SCI is the first ESG strategy with the potential to achieve the SDGs. It provides the first full investment risk mitigation strategy and enhances returns, impact, reputation and AuM. Frank Dixon wrote the GSC books. They provide systemic solutions for all major areas of society. He also developed the GSC framework. It uses the laws of nature to provide a whole system framework for human sustainability and system change. Prior to GSC, he was the Managing Director of Research for the largest ESG research firm (Innovest/MSCI). Clients include CalPERS, Mellon, ABN AMRO, Walmart and the US EPA. He has presented at many conferences and universities, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT and Cambridge. Frank Dixon has an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Copyright © 2024 Frank Dixon
[i] Jennifer Kahn, Can Emotional Intelligence Be Taught?, New York Times, September 11, 2013.
[ii] Same as above.
[iii] John Shindler Ph.D., Transformative Classroom Management: Positive Strategies to Engage All Students and Promote a Psychology of Success, www.CalStateLA.edu, Accessed February 18, 2013.
[iv] Same as above.
[v] Elizabeth Hines, What Happens When Parents Stand Up and Say No to Testing?, www.AlterNet.org, October 30, 2013.
[vi] John Shindler Ph.D., Transformative Classroom Management: Positive Strategies to Engage All Students and Promote a Psychology of Success, www.CalStateLA.edu, Accessed February 18, 2013.
[vii] Bruce E. Levine, Why Are Americans So Easy to Manipulate and Control?, www.AlterNet.org, October 11, 2012.
[viii] Alfie Kohn, The Case Against Grades, Educational Leadership, November 2011.
[ix] Same as above.
[x] Bruce E. Levine, Why Are Americans So Easy to Manipulate and Control?, www.AlterNet.org, October 11, 2012.
[xi] George Catlin, No contest: the case against competition, Share International, March 1998.
[xii] Alfie Kohn, The Case Against Grades, Educational Leadership, November 2011.
[xiii] Same as above.
[xiv] Same as above.
[xv] Same as above.
[xvi] Same as above.
[xvii] Same as above.
[xviii] John Shindler, Ph.D., Transformative Classroom Management: Positive Strategies to Engage All Students and Promote a Psychology of Success, www.CalStateLA.edu, Accessed February 18, 2013.
[xix] Robert Brooks, Ph.D., How Can Teachers Foster Self-Esteem in Children?, www.GreatSchools.org, Accessed February 18, 2013.