I was surprised yesterday when an Oregon friend commented on the competition and discord post. I hadn't meant to send it out until this morning, which is my usual time of day. Sometimes, I make mistakes and click on the wrong thing without paying good attention.
An additional side of competition is the lack of ways to measure ourselves except by comparisons with others. Such relative measurement is clear in our words for high quality such as "excell-ent" and "outstanding". If you try to create some labels that teachers could use to express very good work, you can see the basic approach of saying a student is good because he is the better than others. In fact, when teachers try to avoid competition and comparison, the hard-driving parents sometimes ask about relative standing: "Is he the best in the class?" "Is she the best you have ever seen?" It is often surprising to me how difficult it is to communicate high levels of talent, genuinely valuable ability without comparisons. Even with a new sort of ability, it is the rarity or scarcity of the ability that gets our attention: "Your child seems to be able to read other students' minds [and by implication, that is unheard of in anyone else]".
Twitter: @olderkirby
