TRAINING with varsity swimmers makes the JV novice a better swimmer. She watches their refined technique, copies their S-curve strokes and stretches her lungs to keep up. After her first week, in her fatigue, she curses her competitors. But after a month, she sees the defined muscles in her arms, she breathes every five strokes instead of three and she swims in the fastest lane on JV. After this first month she wishes her toughest opponents to be closest to her, she respects them, copies them and learns from them. The best athletes embrace competition, they flourish in it. Competitors force each other to excel, and the greatest rivalries in sport become the finest examples of overcoming.
At the most competitive schools the question of "what have you learned?" is replaced with "how well can you show it?" It may seem that the second question actually proves which students are best, but what is to separate the skilled charlatan from the intelligent student? In subjects like science and math our University uses weighted exams and ranked curves to make this distinction. Discussion, group work and peer critique are minimized while other, more easily quantifiable measurements are taken. But with the emphasis on test-taking, students at the University are pushed to focus more on the "showing" than the learning. Students of science and math are encouraged to become good "test-takers" rather than aspiring to be good scientists and mathematicians. And because the need to outdo your classmates is so compelling, students begin to see each other as impediments to success, rather than vital antagonists -- as necessary opponents to struggle against. Students maintain the mentality of individual versus collective, and the intended communal learning experience becomes one of distrust and solitude. The struggle for self-betterment is mutated into student versus curve, and the most noble pursuit of knowledge becomes a relentless quest for the gold.
Just like athletes, students at the University can benefit from an academically competitive environment. However, in application, the spirit of competition has corrosive effects; it distorts the picture of who the most qualified candidates are. In academia, competition is often a contest over limited resources: honors certificates, job offerings and placement into graduate school. There are only a limited number of opportunities, so only a limited number of students can be given them. But with more college applicants, growing educational costs and the increasing need to attain a graduate degree, students today are being pressured to excel, despite the apparent scarcity of opportunities. Although these competitive pressures help foster academic excellence, they also encourage scholastic pretentiousness.
Still, some believe that competition in any setting brings superior individuals forward. In athletics this is strikingly clear; the fastest person wins the 100 meter sprint and the strongest power lifter clears the most weight. But in academia, the contestants are asked more complex questions: Who can argue with clarity and persuasion? Who can heal others with medicine and compassion? Who can create structures out of intellect and imagination? These challenges cannot be answered with finish lines and iron dumbbells alone. Straight A's do not prove one's ability to convince a jury; perfect MCATs do not reflect one's desire to heal others.? Although these measurements of intelligence are necessary, they are not sufficient; their current importance and heavy weighting crowds out other traits. When, as the syllabi on toolkit indicate, CHEM-142 and 242, as well as PHYS-203 and 204 only award A's to a certain percentage of students, the goal shifts from learning vital pre-med material to beating out, say, 82 percent of the class.
In this situation, even if a student learns all the information held in the course, she might still earn a relatively lower grade. The student is not evaluated on what she has learned, but only how she compares to other students. Instead of proving which students will be the best doctors or the sharpest physicists, the class invites the best memorizers and the most pious grade worshipers to excel. Facts and equations are furiously memorized and then regurgitated onto paper. And the goal to understand the material for life is replaced by an invitation to memorize for test-day.
Under this system, passionate candidates are beat out while the process continuously attracts the wrong kind of student. The overly competitive atmosphere at the University forces students to forget that learning itself is the intended purpose of schools, Students will always compete with one another for scarce resources, but by restructuring academic competition around peer critique and group learning, the intellectual struggle can once again become a cultivating process, rather than a stifling one.
Hamza Shaban is a Cavalier DailyViewpoint writer.
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