But you can’t take competition out of the children.
I subbed last week for a librarian at the local American school and instead of working in the library that day, I did what she was scheduled to do that day and worked at their annual sports day. Only they don’t call it “sports day”, they call it “kids day” – and rightfully so because there was nothing sports-like about it.
When I was a child we called it “field day” and there were actual competitive sporting events. We had things like sprints, long jump, relays. There were also slightly borderline events like three-legged race and wheelbarrow race, but all the events had one thing in common: they were all competitive and they all had a declared winner. Someone kept a tally, and at the end of the day the person who won the most events was declared the overall winner and on the next regular school day the first, second, third and fourth winners were recognized with ribbons. It was meant to be a mini-Olympic type day and anyone who cared competed fiercely for those ribbons. I can still remember that I won first place for the girls when I was in sixth grade.
Back to the present and last week’s kids day. It was a day of fun, a day of games, but not a day of competition. At least not officially. Some of the games had ways to measure wins and losses, but they were all team events and so far as I could tell, no one was keeping track of it in any official way. As the officials running the various game stations, we assigned points for how well the children listened to the instructions, how much positive team spirit they displayed, and how many children were wearing hats. If there were a way to swab for sunscreen and what SPF they were wearing, I’m sure that would have been on the sheet as well. But nowhere was there a spot for recording winners and all the activities were team activities. No individual events. It was all for fun.
In spite of all this carefully orchestrated non-competitive fun, I still heard kids cheering for their teammates to hurry up, accusing others of cheating, and declaring themselves the winners of an event. They were clearly enjoying themselves, but they were also very intent on winning and were disappointed when they didn’t do as well as they would have liked.
So why is it that we can still celebrate the victory of our Olympic athletes, but we want to erase any sign of competition when it comes to our children? Where do people think that Olympians come from anyway? Or any successful people in any field for that matter? Different people are good at different things. No one will excel at everything, and yes, when you are young and still figuring all that out, it’s not always a happy or comfortable process. But parents and teachers aren’t doing anyone any favors by trying to shield children from that knowledge. And from what I’ve seen over the years on soccer fields, tennis courts, and schools, parents and teachers would be much better off accepting that competition is a part of human nature and instead of trying to expunge it from the curriculum, teaching children sportsmanship – how to be good winners and good losers.
