Essay About Competition

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Competition
Competition is defined as a contest between two or more individuals, groups for the prize, honor, or advantage. When education is combined with competition, it arises many arguments whether sports should exist in the school. People also make argument that without sports, students will raise their academics higher. Also, when students compete in school, they will have self-esteem issues. However, I feel school is a place for learning; competition in sports are school activities, and they do teach students life lessons and skills.
“Sports are embedded in American Schools in a way they are not almost anywhere else. Yet this difference hardly ever comes up in domestic debates about America’s international mediocrity in education. … …show more content…

She implied, “The problem is the dishonesty. By mixing sports and academics, we tempt kids into believing that it’s O.K. if they don’t like math or writing - that there is another path to glory. Less obvious is that this path ends abruptly. whereupon they get to spend 50 years in an economy that lavishly rewards those with higher-order skills and ruthlessly punishes those without” (Ripley). In many ways, I strongly disagree with her argument. We can’t never directly assume and make a connection that every student will be able to excel in the future just from book studies. Not everyone is going to become a mathematician or a writer and that is why school need activities and sports for students to explore and learn the lessons and skills that books don’t provide. In sports, athletes learn teamwork, commitment, social skill, responsibility and many more. All these skills are helpful when they step off the field or court. For example, when we look at sports and workforce, they both central around the idea of working together to achieve a goal efficiently, learn through trial and error, and building relationship as a whole team. Without sports or activities in school, students may struggle in the …show more content…

“A structure that makes my success depend on your failure.” This is a statement from “No-Win Situation” article, by Alfie Kohn. In his article, he talked about how the competitor is not the problem, but the structure of competition is. I agree with what he has to say. There are games where both parties win. When no one is higher than another, but that’s not how competition is in school and definitely not in the society we live in. The structure of competition have always been resulting winner and loser, so why worry about the structure of something that we don’t have the capability to change it because it’s the only way we know and grew up with. If we look at the structure differently, how will people learn the drive to be more successful when there is no failing from a competition? Not everyone is going to reach the top, the first time they play sports and real life situation. Competition is there to make us be better than the person next to us, to make us work harder and strive for our goal. People set high standard so they can win from competing. If the structure of competition is a win-win situation, no one would have to strive to be the best, because they will automatically win by doing the minimal requirement. During competitions, others may also argue that when student compete, their self-esteem might be damaged. In David Whitley’s article, he wrote about Bill Gates giving this quote

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