Competition and Learning

Business is a a poor model for learning.

Business is competitive and competition improves performance in athletics, music competitions, and other activities where people are motivated to improve and win. However, competition between individuals is devastating for improving learning.

Government, business, and educational leaders have based their decisions about learning on this faulty reasoning, which already is having disastrous results as exemplified by young conscientious students having anxiety attacks and the surge of high school students giving up and just dropping out of school.

Competition improves performance but is devastating to those who are never in the winner’s circle.

Collaboration—not competition—improves learning.

People will look back twenty years from now (if not sooner) and ask, “How could we have been so foolish as to allow this to occur?”

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