According to my parents, I picked up my first golf club at the age of 3. By the age of 7, I was playing golf on almost a daily basis. Why do I tell you this? Because it's simply an example of a endeavor where you simultaneously can compete against an opponent while competing against yourself, and you have no one to blame but yourself when you don't perform at the level that you know you're capable of, and your score is a total function of your skill, honor and respect for the rules of the game.

When I played the sport on a organized and competitive level, we often had tournaments to determine who was the best, on that given occassion. Generally speaking, trophies were awarded to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishers in said tournaments, within given flights if the tournament was flighted. This meant that regardless of the number of participants, the number of recognized "winners" was pre-determined. On many occassions I was not among these winners at the end of the day. On more than a few, I was among these winners at the end of the day. Either way, I found myself heading to the range to work on my game to try and improve my skills so that hopefully, more often than not, I could go home at the end of a given event as one of the winners. Guess what? It worked. The harder I worked, the more often I found myself winning. It can be quite addictive, and it's not a self-destructive behavior, as long as you are playing fair to the rules of the game.

In the classroom I was not as diligent, and therefore I never found myself included among the Top Ten or Cum Laude, but that was never my aspiration. However, I never for a second resented the notion that some had put more emphasis on those pursuits and were thusly recognized for their efforts, much as I had been recognized for mine in a different pursuit. Envy and jealousy are filthy emotions, and I have always tried to keep that in mind. What was so wrong with those kids getting recognized for their efforts, much as I was recognized for mine? Nothing! To disagree with me here is to deny nature, and thusly makes you an assha....no wait, I've worn out that word. It makes you "one who would deny the nature of mankind". ;)

It has come to my attention that a segment of society is pushing for the removal of such things as Top Ten lists of HS students, publishing the Honor Roll in the paper, trophies for the winners of sporting contests, and in general, the stupidly subliminal philosophy that there are no such things as winners and losers in life, because to recognize such might theoretically adversely affect a childs self-esteem. This, in my humble opinion, is one of the most dangerous threats to a healthy society ever concocted. Bottom line: There are winners and losers in the world. If some jackass told you the world was fair, he was either smoked up, or a huckster. HE WAS LYING TO YOU! The world is not a fair place, and there will always be winners and losers, regardless of what you bleeding-heart neighbor tells you.

A hypothetical: Assuming that you watch say...The Super Bowl, Wimbledon, The Masters, The British Open, The World Cup, The Tour? Would you watch if Tiger, Lance, Pete, The Patriots, The Brazillians etc. were not crowned the winners at the end of the event? If the event simply ended with all the participants getting a slap on the back and shitty, cheap trophy? I think I already know your answer.

If you disagree with my general point here then I must point you to my final illustration, and if you're smarter than the guy who wrote this, than I only have two questions for you. Are you Diana Moon Glampers, and what the hell are you doing on Sciforums?

Paging H.


http://penguinppc.org/~hollis/personal/bergeron.shtml

Edit: If this this post creates the debate that I suspect it will, the nature of the debate will boil down to Economic Philosophy, which guides most everything in this world. Just trying to save the mods some work in moving the thread around to the appropriate forum. :cool:

Competition is the self-righting natural mechnism of increasing efficiency in economics. The nature of competition drives individuals to focus on what they are good at that also benefits the economy. In this way, they are compelled to move towards that which benefits them the most and in turn, it benefits the economy the most, which benefits them more, which goes on and on into perpetually increasing economy because the total value of the system has increased (note that value is generally subjective, which is what allows for the increase in the economy (because it's your percepetion of your economic value that motivates you to participate)).

As such, I think it is valuable for this to be taught in all aspects of life. I'd say it would be very advantageous to the overall system if this context were actually spelled out for people, such that they take from it what they may.

So yeah, keep the trophies please, and expand the context so that people understand that losing is winning a chance to try something else eh?

Thanks for that story. Excellent stuff.

Competitive sports and education are not comparable endeavors.
Sports are an optional and unessential activity, something that people who are not well suited for can opt not to participate in without it effecting their life in any major way.
Education is not such an activity. The education a person recieves plays a very significant role in determining their future prospects. If they fail at it, our society offers them few options. The purpose of education is not to weed out the winners from the losers, but to give young people the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in whatever field they are most suited. As such, practices that frame education as a contest lead students to approach it in the wrong way. When I was in high school, they would gather the entire student body every quarter for an assembly in which they would read out the names of all the students who they deemed worthy of honors(about a quarter of them) and have them each come up and get a certificate. Every quarter, the same students were called up. Most of them didn't care about getting honors, and many, like myself, used the certificates to take notes on. However, students who did not recieve them must have formed a very poor opinion of an institution that required them to sit through a ceremony in which the same people were honored over and over again.
On the other hand, among the students who did well, although they didn't care about the honors program, they cared immensely about their grades and class ranking. This lead to a fierce competition in which they would go to great lengths, not to learn the material, but to obtain a good grade.
I knew some students who dropped out, at the encouragement of the administration, who actually had better understandings of the material being taught then those who were ranked top in their class.
This situation I've since found is pretty much the way it is at most schools, and I think illustrates the problem with applying a survival of the fittest philosphy to them.
Schools that function in this way churn out high ranked graduates who may or may not actually know anything about the subjects they did so well in, while many others who could have succeeded and in some cases had more potential than those who did succeed are cast aside and prevented from achieving their potential.

I understand your differentiation regarding athletics and academics, but I don't agree that the comparisons are completely irrelevant. The point of my original post was to illustrate that the entire realm of our existence on this planet IS competitive, and therefore it would be foolish to attempt to do away with many of the mechanisms that have resulted from organized competition.

Everyone is not equal in every facet of their person. This is not up for debate. Those who wish to make everyone equal in every way are denying the very essence of nature.

Competition in academics is real. This is not up for debate.

Competition in athletics is real. This is not up for debate.

To refuse to acknowledge the reality of competition in every aspect of your world is to refuse to acknowledge reality.

Do you not compete for a mate? A job interview? Placement in a University? Buying a home? Buying a car?

Whether you conciously realize it or not, you are always competing.

Let me boil it down to this: If you completely remove the notion of superlatives in the world, then wont the species gravitate toward the least common denominator?

I understand your differentiation regarding athletics and academics, but I don't agree that the comparisons are completely irrelevant. The point of my original post was to illustrate that the entire realm of our existence on this planet IS competitive, and therefore it would be foolish to attempt to do away with many of the mechanisms that have resulted from organized competition.

Everyone is not equal in every facet of their person. This is not up for debate. Those who wish to make everyone equal in every way are denying the very essence of nature.
I'm not saying everyone should be equal(No, I'm not Diana Moon Glampers) or that competition should be disallowed. What I am saying is that the goals our society emphasizes as worthy of striving for are the wrong ones.


Competition in academics is real. This is not up for debate. It certainly is real, and I think my example illustrates its present outcome. The competition in schools today is to convince the teacher that you deserve an A through whatever means possible, without doing any more work than absolutely necessary. The peak of excellence in this competition is someone who finds a foolproof way to cheat, thereby letting them do well without doing any work. This extends beyond schools to our society in general. The whole idea that an individual working soley in their own interest ultimately benefits society the most tends to run into the problem that quite often the most efficient way to better your own circumstances is to cheat society in one way or another.



To refuse to acknowledge the reality of competition in every aspect of your world is to refuse to acknowledge reality.

Do you not compete for a mate? A job interview? Placement in a University? Buying a home? Buying a car?

Whether you conciously realize it or not, you are always competing.

There are some places where competition is appropriate and others where it is not. If you had two kids and made them compete with each other for everything you gave them, starting as soon as they could walk, you'd likely end up with two very screwed up kids.

Wow! Sounds like you've got some other issues running in the background here. Sure, there are cheaters in society, just look at Martha Stewart, but society has something called law to deal with them.

This all goes back to my original illustration. Without honesty and honor, we have no society. If you have completely given up on the notion that there are still honest and honorable people out there, then I guess it's time to unplug yourself from the grid and move to Montana.

Sounds like you feel that you have been screwed over by the system, and you're very pissed off about it. It happens, no doubt. Good luck with that.

There are all kinds of legal loopholes people can exploit, and in any Martha Stewart is hardly representative of what usually happens to corporate criminals.
People are not born honest and honorable, and an educational system that rewards people based soley on results will tend to steer people away from such values.
and regarding your attempt to write off my argument as bitterness, I actually consider myself to have come through the educational process unscathed, I didn't care about being at the top of my class, focused on actually learning(largely outside of school) and ended up doing pretty well anyway.