Thesis statement: Parents and teachers should encourage competition among the children as it helps them in their skillful areas.
Discussion
Competition acts as a platform in which competitors can show their skill and judges can pick the best among the exhibitors. The aim is to show appreciation and congratulates the people who took part in the exercise.
It will allow the children to have a healthy relation among themselves by sharing their experiences and perspectives about the competition.
It is a learning exercise even though there are those that emerge as the final winners.
It encourages the children to excel in their skills with the aim of becoming the best in their field.
Disadvantages
It brings about enmity and seclusion among the children after the competition.
It brings down the morale of the losers as they see themselves as unworthy of winning.
Some of the competition lack overall purpose to the cause through unfair judgment by the judges.
Competition
Competitions are platforms whereby people have a chance to show their extra skills or expertise for a chance to claim the top positions. The winners tend to have a standing ovation for their prowess in the field. The rest receive congratulatory messages or participation certificates for the effort in the exercises. At the end of the day, whether one won or lost, it was a healthy exercise for them. One learns a lot from both winners and losers and makes them aware of the mistakes done. However, parents and teachers tend to change the perspective of competitions by shielding their children from the thoughts that they are losers. Their perspective is to protect their emotions and notions that they cannot achieve anything in life. Parents and teachers should encourage good competition among the children as it helps them grow in their skill areas.
The article by Suzanne Sievert talks of a competition, which her son participated in school. The competition was to see who had the best pumpkin decorating, which was quite an achievable task (Sievert 2010). Her son received a ribbon to mark him as a winner though all other children received similar ribbons. The child wondered who the winner was if everyone received a ribbon. It was quite hard for Sievert to convince his son that he was a winner or establish who the winner was if all the ribbons were the same. She accounts of several scenarios where she avoided announcing the winner between his son and other children. The thought of qualifying everyone as a winner might hurt the losers. Despite avoiding the notion, the children still could not understand the reason of competing if they could not know the winner (Sievert, 2010).
Growing up as a child, competitions were a part of life. It was a daily activity, which everyone participated in especially doing common tasks like eating, running and attire. It provided children with the opportunity to become better in life and appreciate those that were good at it. In class, the best students received sweets or cakes for doing well in a subject, which in turn boosted the class marks since everyone was reading to receive a gift. These activities and exercises are among the advantages of conducting a healthy competition among the children. No one felt bad at the end of each challenge since every experience was a learning curve. If one were number seven in class the previous term, then became number five in the current term, they would feel like winners as they improved in their overall position.
However, the disadvantages of competition are that it brings out enmity among children, especially those that cannot take a defeat. Some of the students have the notion of being winners all the time and anyone who steals the position from them is an enemy. Others tend to take the defeat too far by crying or throwing tantrums. These are some of the extreme cases I witnessed while growing up. Others tend to fear their parent’s wrath if they fail to become winners and, in turn, hurts their emotions as they seek to please their parents or guardians more than themselves. Other competitions tend to have bias results, which aim to favor a certain individual or group. Such instances bring down the participant’s morale.
These factors tend to drive parents and teachers to create an equal platform for all participants, as they would like the children to have a wrong mentality if they do not become winners. However, it only makes the situation worse since the children will never have a chance to prove themselves better than the rest. Most of them would fail to improve their skills since their parents or teachers praise them as winners even if the children made little effort towards their work. In conclusion, competitions ought to be a healthy platform that seeks to congratulate the winners and help those that participated to perfect their skills.
Reference
Sievert, S. (2010, March 19). It's Not Just How We Play That Matters. Retrieved from Newsweek Magazine: http://www.newsweek.com/its-not-just-how-we-play-matters-148953
