Anxiety about the need to succeed has been running high for decades, but the global economic crisis, together with high levels of youth unemployment, have turned that fear into self-perpetuating hysteria. If well-paid jobs are few, then a lustrous educational track record is crucial, with the risks of failure high and the costs of underachievement deadly.
We have created a competitive marketplace for education in which kids compete against kids, teachers against teachers, and schools against schools in a frantic bid for excellence
Tests divide dividing children at an early age into winners and losers.
Parents justify this be saying it’s a hypercompetitive world out there. There’s no moment too soon for kids to face the race that is life. So competition cascades throughout education: children competing for places and exam results; teachers competing for exam results (which may have an impact on their pay); schools competing for a place in the magazine and website listings that identify the institutions that promise to produce winners. And if children run faster in a race, the argument runs, won’t everyone study harder when competing against one another? Isn’t turning education into one giant multi-athlon the key to Olympian achievements for young minds?
These apps turns students into great test-taking machines but would in no way guarantee the deeper learning—self-motivation and discipline, social and emotional skills, collaborative, communication, and creative talents—that we seek for them.
What we know from at least half a century of research into human motivation is that extrinsic rewards—rankings, prizes, grades—crowd out intrinsic drive.
Moreover, genuine critical thinking and innovation require that the mind be allowed to wander, to try out answers that don’t work, to test concepts, and, crucially, to make mistakes. All of this is directly discouraged when the focus of learning is on exams and results.
Notes from “A Bigger Prize” by Margaret Heffernan