How Education Created A Competitive World and Sets Humanity on Each other's Throats - an answer beyond random thoughts and reasoning »

Education is important for personal development; as it rears us to become a fine human being and a culturally acceptable person, and it is important as most of us earn our livelihoods from it. Education is important as we gain the knowledge necessary in leading a meaningful life; as everyday activities involve science, mathematics and languages. And We don’t even realise how important a good education is.

But education has its own effects. In this day and age, the competition in academics is rising, and wouldn’t stop.
“Students are burdened to score better than the rest, which leads to unhealthy competition amongst peers. It becomes a race to perform better than the rest. This leads to diseases like anxiety as you are anxious to get the best marks. Students get depressed if they cannot keep up with the pressure. Due to such pressures, students fall ill to poor health, which reduces their performance. To score better, students resort to cramming rather than learning the lesson, and when you cram up the lesson you don’t learn as learning is the basic purpose of education” – Deependra Verma.

I could remember vividly when I was in primary school, being one of the brightest students my parents most especially my Mom was always thrilled and got even happier when I started toping my class. Right from tender age and from the very first day we sets foot into our various schools, competition sets in. Education have this major flaw of setting every students against each other; making some important, and making some feel less needed in the society.

Before I started going home with the first position, my mom would ask; “who took first, who took second, do they have two heads?” These questions propelled me to gave my very best in class, and would later fortified me to go for the best just to make my parents proud. Which I did.
The moral impact Education exacerbates the level of moral values of a child. He instils a form of competitiveness that borders on unhealthy relationships. From the moment they are admitted to school, children are anchored in an attitude that personal achievements are everything. They are taught that brands and trophies are all you need to lead a successful life. The how and the why are not so important, just catch up on what – that’s what a child is taught. And that’s what he grows when he learns. Society has sunk too deep into this mud to get out now – it’s a custom, a tradition to teach our children to come to class and not less. It does not create a healthy adult, but a competitive animal of our grandchildren.

Now my question is: why is education designed in such a way that the success of one is the failure of many, and the failure of many is the success of one? Take for instance a class of twenty students; you scoring first position means nineteen others failed. Now you are excited and celebrated to have succeeded, regardless of the pain and agony these people must go through because of your success. And to crown it all, these people will even had to clap for you, as you rub it on their faces celebrating your success. In my secondary school days, we call this “the honor role”
For those familiar with Titcombe College Egbe, you will know it’s not a school for a dull head; as every activities in the school are all competitive.

My friends and I back in the days do call out the “honor rollers” even before the headteacher does. We murmured their names and laughed over it in amusements. And when a particular name didn’t get mentioned, we say; “he didn’t make it this term” and the rest of us whose name didn’t got mentioned walked out of the auditorium, failures or just somewhere in-between. This is how most people were raised. This is how much damage education has done and still doing to our society.

The grading system. The positions. The titles and encomiums are doing more harms than good, and should be checked.
Life should be about humanity first. A brother helping out another brother. A friend helping a fellow friend to succeed. That should have been a perfect dogma. Students graduates from schools with this hideous mindsets and you wonder why your neighbor doesn’t give a crap about you but just after himself? Do not blame him, because that’s how he was raised. All he knows is how to be the best, survives, and cares less about any other person succeeding or failing. He’s holding the trophy, and that’s all that matters.

How then can we get out of this mud we have been swimming in for generations, and with our grandchildren and their grandchildren’s foots already deepen in it?

In conclusion, I want you to look around you: check the lives of the ones we tagged ‘illiterate’. They are free from the ideology that life should only be about competition and who’s getting the spotlight.
Now, consider the Igbo’s Apprenticeship System: which has produced thousands of successful businesses across the country. This practice of lifting one another up succeeds overtime because it is free of the convectional kind of education. No competition.

So, do the maths.

Kelvin Oluseyi Eleta,
Writer, Author, Content Developer.
Abuja, Nigeria.