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Should we encourage competitions in schools?
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Should we encourage competitions in schools? 11 years 5 days ago #475

  • neelima
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Having competition in studies or sports or any other activities is good to encourage children towards various interests. But at the same time when the kids get the feeling that we should perform better than the other person the "I" ness in the kid increases which is the greatest enemy in our inner growth.

I feel we have to tune our kids to behave sportively, i.e. participating in the activity is important but not the winning part.What are the ways to train our kids in this direction?

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Re: Should we encourage competitions in schools? 11 years 5 days ago #476

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Competition is stressful , when the competition is between a persona and an external person. Competition is internal, to evolve, to grow and progress, then it is a joy and stressful.

Being a winner, there is a loser and sorrow, but being an achiever there is only joy to be shared. There are five levels of achievement .

Yes we can train children in a non-competitive but successful way. we will discuss this soon.

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Re: Should we encourage competitions in schools? 11 years 5 days ago #477

COMPETITION - WHY DO WE COMPETE? Because we are not happy with our current position and always wants someone below us and nobody above us. I think this competition thinking comes in a child when parents starts comparing their child with others. This comparision indirectly makes the child to feel as if she/he is inferior than the other child and try to work hard to get the position, which from outer world looks like encouragement, but actually the kid is trying to pull the other kid down.

This is the current scenario which I'm undergoing with my 4 year old daughter. I made myself clear first, I don't want my child to be first always, my objective is she need to complete the task, that's all. Amount of time taken is not a big criteria. As mentioned earlier when we wanted our child to become first, then we obviously we are pulling down another child and put our child in his/her position. Which I think it is going to lead to more bad things like Jelous, Greed etc.,

I often play few games like Candy Land, building puzzles with my child together. Before starting the game, I always ask her "Why do we play game?" and kept emphasizing "We play because we want to be happy".

Then we start the game, initially she started to say she finished FIRST. I introduced a new concept during this incident that saying YOU are FIRST is the EGO ASURA and the thinking you want to come first is DESIRE (Aasai in Tamil) which is another form of EGO ASURA. And I used the story of Brigu Maharishi to explain the Ego concept.

After few weeks of this education, when we play together now when she is about to complete the game, she says, "SHE WILL WAIT FOR ME TO REACH THE SAME PLACE WHERE SHE IS AND THEN WE WILL GO TOGETHER" and she gives me more turns to play, I also do the same when I was about to complete the game. Finally I tell her the game finishes only when both of us complete, not just one person completes. This is really helping both of us. All this discussion happens in Tamil between us.

Now when she plays with her grand parents who are visiting us, she does the same with them. When her grand parents say "LET US SEE WHO WILL FINISH THE MILK FIRST", she replies to them as "THIS IS AASAI (DESIRE), I WANT TO DRINK MILK TO BE HAPPY"

Now the major part is to keep this going with her and put this in practice with her always and all aspects.

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Re: Should we encourage competitions in schools? 11 years 4 days ago #478

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@Muthu

That's a good way to ask kids the reason for performing a task before...Even we too never encourage using the word First in our family.

But the problem arises in schools where kids are forcefully made to come first and win prizes for their achievements in sports or other cultural activities or even studies.

May be even here Awareness plays a major role, when the child is aware of what is actually happening and why they are made to perform these activities then the EGO might gradually dissolve and kids would all just be happy to share the joy of participating in the event....

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Re: Should we encourage competitions in schools? 11 years 3 days ago #481

@Neelima

There is a saying in Tamil "Whichever can't bend at 5 years will not bend at 50 years". So during the initial stage of the children from birth to 8 years parents play a vital role about this competitive mind generation. If we parents are aware of this aspect and build the kids accordingly for the first 8 years, it will be easier for kids to handle the situation in the school and society.

The major habits which I see in parents which induces the competitive mind in the kids are
1. Comparing own kids with others (both praising and scolding)
2. Hastiness (Not giving enough time for the kids to think or do a work, even to eat)
3. Not giving importance to mother tongue (This makes kids to feel their mother tongue is inferior than others)
4. Not explaining the history of the land where the kids belong.
5. Rewarding with some materialistic things for certain actions (especially birthday gifts)
6. Not explaining the reason.
7. Discussion gossips in front of kids or with them.

In turn after this 8 years parents will see a huge difference in themselves, they will not be competing with others, instead they will live much more peacefully.

Today's most of the schools are making the kids as race horses. They prepare these kids for the race and dump them in the race course. There are always winner and losers in the race. The winner gets all the attention and losers gets abused or sometimes killed or don't get attention or go into intensive training to win the next race.

Parents need to decide whether they want their kids to be a race horse or a wild horse. There are gain and losses on both.


Race Horse
  • Will have nice man made shelter
  • Will have nice man made food
  • There will be someone to bath, feed etc.,
  • Will have fame when it wins the race
  • After winning the race, it will be treated as king
  • After loosing, it gets absued
  • When not fit for racing, it is either killed or dumped
  • Has regular practice and training
  • People gains money
  • Always remains as a slave to the master



Wild Horse
  • Will have nature made shelter
  • Will have nature made food
  • Horse need to bathe, eat itself
  • Nobody knows about it's existence
  • No winning, No Loosing
  • No winning, No Loosing
  • No winning, No Loosing
  • No timely schedule
  • Nobody gains
  • No slave, No master


The list can be stretched a lot.

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Re: Should we encourage competitions in schools? 11 years 3 days ago #482

  • neelima
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Good comparison..

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