A Letter to Teachers, Coaches, and Parents

Learning and Competition

As teachers, coaches and parents we all want what’s best for our students and children. My questions to you are: Does putting them into competition before they are prepared help accomplish this goal? Might the premature introduction of competition into the learning process inhibit performance, sow the seeds of stress and performance anxiety, limit long-term potential, and also increase the possibility of developing unhealthy behaviors such as aggression, fear, choking, making excuses, cheating, or quitting?

Competition is an advanced aspect of any subject, sport, or activity, not something to be engaged in by beginners or people who don’t have the fundamental skills. Introducing competition before people are ready for it, no matter how “low key” or “innocent” it seems, creates many problems. It’s been accepted wisdom by competitive people that the best way to prepare children for the real world is to make them compete against each other as soon as possible, but for most, the research proves the contrary.

Until people can demonstrate competence in the physical, mental, and emotional fundamentals, there’s no good reason for injecting competition into academics, sports, or any other activity. From my long involvement in education, the early introduction of competition does far more harm than good. Even for the ones who do well, there are psychological consequences. I know this is blasphemy to many, but the evidence can no longer be ignored. Too few people truly excel in a competitive system.

I grew up as a competitive athlete, being quite successful in the difficult sport of tennis. I graduated from a prestigious college, and have been a professional tennis teacher and coach for 36 years, with well over 25,000 hours of teaching and coaching experience. For the last 25 of those years I’ve had serious reservations about the competitive system that we all live in and many worship.

Eighteen years ago I removed all competition from my tennis program, Effortless Tennis, the results of which prompted me to write, Evolutionary Education: Moving Beyond Our Competitive Compulsion published in 2007. I now understand why so few excel in a competitive system; we educate people by throwing them into competition before they’ve learned any of the fundamental skills. We’ve been conditioned to compete in almost every thing we do, in a “trial by fire” or as I call it, the “throw-the-baby-into-the-deep-end of-the-pool” theory of learning. We rush people into competition, assuming that this approach results in excellence, but for most it’s a recipe for mediocrity and/or failure.

The reason why putting people into competition prematurely is so problematic, is that once competition is introduced into the equation, the goal changes from learning skills to trying to win, or at least trying not to lose. We all know how important it is to be seen as a winner. With their egos and self-esteem on the line, the need to win distracts students from mastering the essential skills required for success. This is a shortsighted approach.

So, to all teachers and coaches, no matter how noble your motives and good your heart, if you are having your students compete before they “own” the skills of your particular subject, sport, or activity, you are limiting their performance and potential, diminishing their enjoyment of the learning process, undermining their self-confidence and psychological health, and denying them the chance to discover the importance of intrinsic motivation. How many of your students actually excel? It’s likely only a small number, most don’t. Is this because you’re a bad teacher or coach, or could it be the system?

Parents too are complicit in this damaging process if they encourage their children to be competitive or put them into competition before they’ve learned the basic skills. If you really want to help your students and children be their best, remove all competition—until they can demonstrate competence in the physical and psychological fundamentals.

What I’m saying is not radical. It’s common sense!

Brent Zeller—www.evolutionaryeducation.com, www.effortlesstennis.com

Evolutionary Education: A Synopsis

Evolutionary Education: Moving Beyond Our Competitive Compulsion

It is commonly accepted wisdom that education is the key to a better future. Yet most people feel that there is a crisis in education. Each person has his or her solutions for this crisis, but I believe that few people have been able or are willing to recognize the underlying core issue with this educational crisis.

In 1988, after twenty years of learning and playing the sport of tennis, and 14 years of teaching it to thousands of students, I had a simple realization: The introduction of competition before we achieve proficiency in the fundamental physical, mental and emotional skills, compromises all aspects of the learning process. Like many realizations, mine was a dawning awareness of a truth dimly intuited for years that in retrospect seemed obvious. Like most people, I had believed in the value of competition without ever questioning it. It was how I had been taught, was all I had ever known, and everyone I knew believed it too. But when my perspective changed, I saw that my experience had been teaching me the opposite of my belief the whole time.

Although there is widespread recognition of the many problems in our educational system, there is little recognition or acknowledgement of what I now see as our educational system’s fatal flaw – the competitive model on which it is based. While people all across the political and educational spectrum agree that our educational system is flawed and propose various, often contradictory, solutions, almost all affirm the value and necessity of competition in the learning process.

Competitive learning is widespread and routine in our educational system. In almost every school, sport, subject and skill, beginning students are thrown prematurely into some form of competition, long before they have even approached basic competence. Competition is often introduced at the very start of a student’s involvement with a subject or activity.
In every subject children are given new material to learn and are often tested and graded the next day. Within a few weeks of practice in academics or sports, long before they have achieved basic proficiency, children find themselves competing against each other for “practice” or for coveted positions. One common result of being thrust into premature competition is that performance anxiety is programmed into our cellular memory.

Our collective faith in the competitive system is conditioned and inherited, not based in objective evidence. The belief that a competitive learning environment is the ideal learning environment doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. It is based on an implausible argument that the pressure and stress of competition, the fear of the consequences of losing, the aggressive striving against others, and the desire for the rewards of winning, somehow focuses attention, ignites motivation, develops strength, builds character, and produces excellence. Yet this belief is built on denial and rationalization, for it ignores the negative impact and consequences of premature competition on a majority of children and adult students.

After my epiphany in 1988, I reexamined my lifelong experience as a student, competitor and teacher. I noticed the now apparent flaws and fallacies of the competitive model, and came to an obvious and logical conclusion: The prevalence of competition in the learning process is the primary reason that most people do not achieve true excellence, mastery, or fulfill their potential in school, sports, music, and almost every other field of learning. The skills developed in a competitive system occur despite rather than because of competition. Competition has motivated a small percentage of people to great accomplishment. But much of that motivation comes from an unhealthy emphasis on winning, fear of losing, and an immature self-esteem derived from defeating others and thereby gaining status. Rather than producing the highest level of skill among the greatest number of people, competition produces a majority of “losers”, and a handful of “winners” of inconsistent ability, unfulfilled potential, and relative immaturity.

After teaching tennis to thousands of students and observing the competitive system for more than forty years, I have found that the competitive approach only works for a small percentage of people, and not necessarily the most talented. Those who “succeed” often do so at great cost to others as well as themselves. Every winner at the top of the heap leaves behind a trail of “losers” and wounded egos. Many “winners” succeed by adopting unhealthy perspectives, behaviors, and strategies that create disharmony and hostility with others, and undermine their own mental and emotional development and wellbeing. Our competitive system’s skewed perspective that “winning is everything”, subtly and often overtly encourages an unbalanced, unhealthy approach.

If we objectively examine the real and alleged benefits of our competitive educational system, we see that it does not live up to its hype. Introducing competition into the learning process is often stressful and counter-productive, causing far more harm than good. For a majority of students a competitive learning environment does not increase motivation, improve performance, or support healthy emotional development. It interferes with concentration and diminishes enjoyment, performance and motivation. It is disruptive to learning and makes achieving excellence and mastery more difficult. Premature competition introduces conflict and performance anxiety into the learning process, while tacitly encouraging cheating and other forms of “poor sportsmanship”. The “doping” scandals in almost every professional sport, and the cheating scandals that occur annually in many colleges, universities, and even high schools, are examples. All these things undermine self-esteem, healthy character development and interpersonal relations.

When competition is introduced into the learning process, learning becomes a contest. The focus and emphasis shift from learning, to winning and the fear of losing or failing. When winning is over-emphasized, and “losing” is demonized, the entire process of learning, playing, performing, etc., is seen through a distorted, anxiety-producing lens. The learning process is contaminated by the desire to win (rather than to learn and achieve excellence) and to be seen as a winner, as well as by fears of losing and being seen as a loser. Yet these unhealthy aspects of the competitive model are often ignored, denied, rationalized, and even made to seem “positives”.

My experience and observation have shown me that the premature introduction of competition into the learning process produces far more negative than positive effects and impedes rather than enhances learning and performance levels. In fact, if competition were a drug, the Food and Drug Administration would ban it for its adverse side effects!
A significant factor in the longevity and dominance of the competitive system is cellular memory, the automatic neural patterning of actions and behaviors into our subconscious, our brain, and every cell in our body. Cellular memory is how we learn and retain information. It is how we are able to function effectively and survive. Whatever we repeat in thought, emotion and action, is etched in our cellular memory and becomes instinctive habit. Cellular memory is what causes us to repeat habitual, non-productive, and even self-destructive behaviors. Over time we all program negative behaviors – I call them, less-than-optimal responses— into our cellular memory. Once actions, behaviors, and emotional responses are etched in our cellular memory, it is difficult to “unlearn” them.

Although at this time there is no scientific link, from my life-long observations of human behavior, I believe that over thousands of years, competitive behavior has been deeply wired into individual and collective cellular memories, into our genes, and passed on from generation to generation. That most people find it difficult to imagine an alternative to competitive behavior shows how deeply programmed this belief has become. Psychologist Alfie Kohn points to this conditioned cellular memory via “socialization” when he writes, “That most of us fail to consider the alternatives to competition is a testament to the effectiveness of our socialization. We have been trained not only to compete but to believe in competition.” And sociologist David Riesman writes, “First we are systematically socialized to compete — and to want to compete — and then the results are cited as evidence of competition’s inevitability.”

Yet we can use this powerful learning tool of cellular memory to repattern old, negative, conditioned habits of thinking and behavior with new, healthy, productive habits.

I do not suggest eliminating competition. I am arguing against its premature introduction into the learning process. I am asking if it is wise and effective to force children into competition while they are learning, before they achieve basic proficiency. Competition can now take its rightful place as an advanced aspect of any activity. Until we have developed essential physical, mental, and emotional skills, we are not ready to compete. Until then, competition interferes with the learning process and diminishes our chances of achieving proficiency, and even emotional maturity.

I’ve heard it argued that if we had to master the fundamentals before competing, it would take years to get to the point where we are ready to compete. This is true. But it only seems like a bad idea from the competitive perspective. The bright side of developing proficiency before competing is that it dramatically increases our development of all-around skills, including physical proficiency, intellectual comprehension, mental concentration, character development, emotional maturity and more.

Today the negative effects of competition shape and define nearly every aspect of modern life, including education, religion, politics, personal and international relations, sports, news, business, and most of popular culture. Many fundamental societal problems arise and are passed on in the way we teach and learn; that introducing competition into every facet of our lives undermines our ability to attain excellence, and perpetuates the very problems that we as individuals and cultures seek so desperately to resolve. The competitive mindset into which we are all indoctrinated prevents us from questioning the validity of the competitive system, or recognizing or acknowledging its devastating effects on individuals and society.

We need to reexamine competition, to see where and when it is useful, and where and when it creates problems. The next evolution in learning will occur in a healthier cooperative model with a skill-to-mastery based focus. Rather than encouraging students to compete with one another for grades, prizes and status, it will facilitate deeper learning, intellectual acuity, emotional maturity, and a genuine self-esteem derived from excellence and mastery. It will raise the overall level of skill, knowledge, and creativity, and allow everyone, from the least to the most talented, to fulfill his or her potential and contribute to the whole.

What I am proposing isn’t theoretical, pie-in-the-sky conjecture. Viable skill-based non-competitive learning programs exist. In the Kumon Method students learn at an individual pace and advance only after mastering each level. Since October of 1992, I have been teaching the highly competitive sport of tennis in a non-competitive/cooperative format that I call Effortless Learning (I started teaching tennis in 1974). As with the Kumon Method, the focus is on mastering the fundamentals at each level before moving to the next. Instead of competing against one another, students help one another to learn through cooperative practice that supports mutual development of essential physical, mental, and emotional skills and greater enjoyment of the game itself. Eighteen years and over twenty thousand hours of on-court observation, with more than a thousand students, has proven to me that a non-competitive learning system makes it easier to master the basics, attain higher levels of skill, and become more balanced and well-rounded human beings in the process. And this approach also increases success in competition.

A non-competitive learning system develops concentration, relaxation, emotional maturity, healthy camaraderie, and fundamental skills. By emphasizing enjoyment of an activity and the learning process for their own sakes, and de-emphasizing the importance of winning, losing, and external rewards, it diminishes negative emotional states and behaviors. Children especially thrive in a non-competitive learning environment, and naturally develop the fundamental skills without the unpleasant stresses and emotions inevitably triggered by premature competition.

It can take time for adults who have internalized the competitive mind-set, due to long-term immersion in it, to stop judging themselves and competing against others as they learn and grow. But I have seen many raised in the competitive system experience a sense of psychological relief in a non-competitive learning environment, as if a huge weight had been lifted from their shoulders. They become able, often for the first time in their lives, to relax in a learning situation and experience the satisfaction and enjoyment of developing skills, competence, and confidence without worrying about winning or losing.
Competition may be part of human nature, but it need not dominate human nature and conduct. By adopting cooperative, non-competitive, skill-to-mastery based models of teaching, learning and living, we can all rise above the limitations of our competitive system and fulfill our greater potential as individuals and as a species.

Brent Zeller
www.evolutionaryeducation.com

Chapter 2—A Competitive Learning System, Part 4, More Drawbacks

Triggers Performance Anxiety
In a competitive society we are often expected or told to “be confident” even before we know what we are doing. It’s good to have confidence in our ability to learn. But how can we be confident, especially in competition, before we’ve really learned the basic skills? True confidence doesn’t come from false bravado, but from hard-earned proficiency and the knowledge that we have the skills necessary to succeed. And whether we’re children or adults, when we haven’t developed these skills, that little voice inside us knows, and tells us, that we don’t know what we’re doing.

Performance anxiety occurs when we’re put into competition before developing a deep inner confidence in our skills and ourselves. If we haven’t adequately developed the necessary physical, mental, and emotional skills in a cooperative environment, it’s almost impossible to develop secure confidence or perform at our highest level in competition. There’s always another contest and even if we won the last one, there’s still someone wanting to beat us in the next one, and the next, and the next. Watch people compete at any level, in any endeavor, and you will often see performance anxiety manifest. Experienced competitors are often better at dealing with or masking their anxiety, but even the best often tighten up or “choke” when the pressure is on.

In general, everyone has some performance anxiety potential, even five- and six-year-olds. It seems to be a natural aspect of the human condition, and it may be connected to our innate fight-or-flight response, hardwired in the limbic brain. But I have come to the conclusion that most of performance anxiety is artificially induced. It only seems natural in a highly competitive culture where nearly everyone is thrust prematurely into competitive situations.
Early experiences of failing or losing under pressure etch the first traces of performance anxiety deep within our emotional cellular memory, and in our subconscious mind. Present performance anxiety is intrinsically related to past experiences of failure in learning or performance situations. And once this anxiety is ingrained in our cellular memory, it often remains as an inhibiting response to perceived pressure long after we stop competing.

Induces Choking
Choking is the ultimate expression of performance anxiety. Sports provide the clearest examples of choking, but it occurs in all areas of life. In 1993, tennis professional Jana Novotna, lost a match she was dominating in the finals at Wimbledon. She was about to ascend to the pinnacle of tennis, when she missed an easy shot. She started thinking about that error and ended up “losing it,” missing shot after shot, including several easy ones. After the match, she was crying on the Duchess of Kent’s shoulder. Novotna was one of the best players in the world at the time, and yet she completely choked and lost all confidence in her skills. This response was the result of previous experiences earlier in her life. (She eventually redeemed herself by winning Wimbledon in 1998.) This is not an atypical example. In fact, it is quite common.

The 2005 U.S. Open Women’s Golf Championships was more of a Greek battlefield than a golf tournament. Annika Sorenstam dramatically blew her chance to win her third major tournament of the year on the way to winning the grand slam (all four majors for the year). No player, man or woman, has ever won all four of golf’s major championships in one year. Having won the first two majors that year, Sorenstam was heavily favored to win this tournament also. But with all the hype around her possibly winning golf’s grand slam, she tightened up and choked it away.

In the same tournament, Paula Creamer and Michelle Wie, two of golf’s new stars, also choked their chances of a title. At the top of the leader board going into the final round – Wie in the lead and Creamer one stroke behind – by the end of the day Creamer had gone eight strokes over par and Wie was eleven over. Lorena Ochoa, in the same tournament, was two strokes out of the lead until, at the last hole, she shot a quadruple bogey eight and dropped far out of contention. In October that same year another top pro golfer, John Daly, about to win a pro tournament in San Francisco, missed two three-foot putts and fell by the wayside. These disastrous chokes are common to professionals in every competitive field. Again, it can be argued that even at the highest levels, more competitions are lost rather than won.

Choking is not due to some mysterious “fatal flaw” in our character, but to patterns etched into our cellular memory through past experiences in competitive situations for which we were truly unprepared. In our culture, we are all put into competition before we have learned the mental and emotional skills to keep us from choking. Put in situations too advanced for our skill level, before we have mastered the fundamentals, we make inevitable critical mistakes that mark us as “losers”. Such common scenarios, repeated over time, program deep inner self-doubts into our cellular memory that often prevent us from performing at our full potential.

Motivates Through External Rewards
To compete, most people require some form of external reward, even if it is only the recognition of being the winner. This starts off innocently enough in children’s games where we are often bribed to compete; offered a soda or some paltry reward if we are the winner. Early on in school, we often compete for a teacher’s gold stars. From there it goes on – the quest for A’s in school, trophies in sports, big bonuses in business, and status in society.

In America it is increasingly difficult to motivate children without offering some external reward. They often want to know what they are going to get before agreeing to do what you ask them to do, having been conditioned to respond this way by virtually every aspect of society. This is prevalent in school, in athletics, and at home. Parents often motivate children to perform tasks, from cleaning their rooms to doing their homework, by offering some form of reward. In my tennis program, some children have asked me what are they going to get if they do what I’m asking. I tell them they’re going to become good tennis players, but that is usually not the answer they’re looking for. This aspect of the competitive system – using external rewards (bribes) as motivation – results in many children losing the ability to motivate themselves simply for the enjoyment of doing the activity itself. They become conditioned to expect external rewards.

This mercenary mentality has also contaminated the world of professional sports. How many professional athletes would put in the countless hours of grueling training and work if there were no giant carrot dangling in front of them? Many athletes are now more consumed with the carrot than with the love of their game. It is arguably the same in almost every competitive industry, from sports, to the arts, to technology and business. When external rewards and punishments become the main motivators in any game or contest, the competitors become mercenaries.

Fosters Overwork
Americans work harder, and longer, with less enjoyment, than citizens in most other developed countries. Many people do become highly successful in our competitive system, often at the expense of a healthy and balanced character and personal life. Successful people must work hard to maintain their lifestyle. Sixty to eighty hour weeks are not uncommon in many top professional echelons. (It takes a lot of effort to make a lot of money and then keep track of it.) Desire for material rewards and prestige, and fear of failure are less-than-optimal motivations. As primary motivations, they don’t produce psychological health or the best long-term results in the development of character.

On the other end of the economic scale, the poor, and increasingly the middle-class, must work as hard, or harder, just to survive, pay for their homes and raise their children. Many work two or three jobs, sixty or more hours a week at minimum wage. Whether rich or poor, most people are constantly on the go, trying to get ahead within our competitive system. The weekly schedule of any family includes one activity after another, from the moment they wake up to the minute they go to bed. Weekends often cram as many fun activities into two days as possible, and frequently include children’s sporting events or performances. There is little time for the downtime so vital for our overall development and well being; the time when we can quietly contemplate the bigger questions of existence and get perspective on our own life or the world at large.

Provokes Conflict
Competition can elicit camaraderie through teamwork, but it also stimulates and provokes conflict. In subtle and not so subtle ways, we are taught to cooperate with and respect the players on our team, and to regard the other side as enemies. Yet even among teammates there is a constant battle to get ahead. We often compete against our teammates for a chance to stand in the lineup or get more playing time. Camaraderie, team spirit, and bonding reside in constant tension with the competitive desire to be number one.

As in war, to see our opponents as human beings is considered weakness. It diminishes the “killer attitude” so highly regarded in competition. This explains why verbal aggression and trash talk are rampant in sports. Look at the common sports vocabulary. We “beat the hell out of,” “crush,” “destroy,” and “kill” our opponents. We call them bums or losers, pussies or faggots, to anger and distract them and lower their self-confidence. Many players frequently taunt their own teammates in the same fashion.

The higher the stakes, the greater the frequency and intensity of such hostile/aggressive behavior. Examples include late hits in football, cheap shots in hockey and basketball, and baseball pitchers purposely trying to hit batters in order to intimidate them. And legendary race car driver, Dale Earnhardt, was called The Intimidator for good reason.

We have all seen reports on the correlation between aggressiveness in athletics being tied to aggressive behavior outside the athletic arena. This behavior is not coincidental. Our competitive system exerts ever-increasing pressure to win on people at higher levels. Where does it end? How many hours can someone work or practice? How much stress can someone endure without cracking? How much needless stress is added by an imbalanced emphasis on winning, and an unhealthy scorn for losing? Perhaps a more cooperative, excellence oriented focus in the early stages of learning would allow us all to accomplish a lot more, with a lot less stress.

Chapter 2—A Competitive Learning System, Part 3, More Drawbacks

Ingrains Inadequate Basic Skills
When we are put into competition too soon, we try everything we can to win, because that’s the goal. But we often forget our basic skills and unconsciously resort to ineffective reactions. This is very apparent in people who start playing competitive tennis before they’ve developed their fundamental physical skills. Almost immediately, the correct form they’ve been practicing degenerates until they look more like they are fending off an attacker than playing tennis. It’s not a pretty sight. Unfortunately, whatever we are doing (and what we are feeling) is being programmed into our cellular memory, to become ingrained habit. Inadequate preparation of basic skills, combined with competition, limits our skill development, and increases the development of bad habits. We may do relatively well initially with inadequate skills, but eventually it works against us.

Ideally we will go back and develop the pieces that we missed. But this doesn’t always happen. Learning a second language provides an apt example here. If we are rushing through the learning process, it is easy to pattern grammatically incorrect sentence structure or inappropriate use of a word into our cellular memory. Someone may be able to understand our meaning, but our statements lose some of their power. Undoing a negative pattern takes far more effort than learning correctly from the start. Inadequate preparation of basic skills is a big problem in most people’s development across all disciplines. Once again, trying to win trumps learning the skills.

Cultivates Winning Without Skill
In every contest there is a winner. In a few cases there is a draw. But being declared a winner doesn’t mean you have developed proper skills or achieved competence, let alone mastery. Participants competing prematurely in any sport or endeavor exhibit more luck than ability, and certainly very little skill. In fact, most contests are lost, not won; they are decided by the loser making too many errors. Yet someone still gets the reward of being called the winner.

Even at the professional level, contests are commonly marred by less-than-optimal play and behavior. (In Chapter 5, I’ll explain why I prefer the term less-than-optimal instead of bad). All too often, even professional athletes play well below their abilities — a baseball or football player dropping an easy catch, a basketball player missing an open shot, a tennis player missing an easy volley, or a soccer or hockey player not scoring a goal on a one-on-one break. At the 2004 French Open Women’s Championships Venus Williams lost a match by making eighty-seven (!) unforced errors out of a total of one hundred points that she lost. Venus is a great tennis player, but her performance that day was pure mediocrity. Her opponent won only thirteen points in the entire match on her own. Yet she “won” the match.

Why do professional athletes tighten up, lose concentration, and miss easy shots that, at their level, they should not miss? In most sports there are situations where events are almost completely within our control. In tennis, it is the serve; we have the ball in our hands. In basketball it is the free throw; no one is blocking our shot. And professionals have been practicing these shots for years, probably tens of thousands of times. Yet even professionals frequently miss in these unchallenged moments. Clearly the problem is between their ears, and ingrained in their cellular memories. To me such incidents illustrate that even top athletes have been limited by premature competition. Their basic psychological skills are underdeveloped.

Produces Low Percentage of Good Players
One of the biggest problems in a competitive system is that far too few players or participants really develop high-level skills or the emotional maturity that true mastery requires. Let me give an example from my own experience. I have been teaching tennis to high-school boys and girls for thirty years. Surprisingly, I have observed that less than 10 percent become genuinely good players. The first reason for this is that most participants play tennis only during the high-school tennis season. Perhaps one-third play a little during the rest of the year. The majority are too busy with other sports, other activities, or schoolwork to find the time to play all year. It is hard to excel at something when you don’t maintain a consistent regimen. But in my experience, the main reason for mediocrity is that these kids are focused on winning before they have acquired the skills to play well. Some play for their school teams for four years, yet remain mediocre. It doesn’t have to be this way. It is the same with many team sports; there are a few stars, and the rest of the players just fill positions.

This tendency toward mediocrity doesn’t just apply to children. I have been teaching and observing adult tennis players for nearly forty years. Most people who play the game for many years don’t improve that much. They tend to plateau and stay at the same level no matter how many years they play. The reason is simple. Most people who play tennis go out on the court, warm up for ten minutes, and start competing. They don’t practice their basic skills; they just play matches. Playing this way ingrains poor physical, mental and emotional habits that limit their potential. They think they are only going to improve by competing, yet they never make much progress, and they don’t understand why. This tendency toward a minority of excellence and a majority of mediocrity occurs in almost every area of endeavor where competition reigns, from school to sports to business to politics.

Beats Down the Naturals
Wanting to do our best is a noble goal. But the side effects of a competitive system significantly diminish our chances of attaining this goal. The people we compete against do everything in their power to keep us from doing our best. They want to beat us. They don’t want us to play our best—unless they still win. This is how the competitive system works.

Some people are naturally gifted; certain abilities come more easily to them. In our competitive system, people with less natural talent are encouraged to do whatever it takes to beat the more naturally talented people. This may include questionable tactics, such as physical or psychological intimidation; or even cheating. When someone has a natural gift, it would be wise to fully support their development as they have the potential to raise the bar to higher levels. But this is not what is promoted in a competitive system. Some of these “naturals” however, also do their best to beat down and lower the confidence of the less talented, thereby hindering them from attaining their potential. Such behavior is subtly and at times overtly encouraged in the competitive system. And it is often interpreted as a sign of having the will or toughness to succeed. But it exacts a tremendous price on both winners and losers, on the naturally talented as well as those less gifted. Ultimately we all miss out through the potential that is never fulfilled, and the shining examples who might have been.

Precludes Relaxed Focus
People do develop focus when thrown prematurely into competition; but it is the focus of a startled rabbit. It’s natural to be scared when we aren’t sure if we know what we are doing, or whether we will be able to perform when it counts. With our ego and self-esteem on the line, our focus is distorted by tension. We go on a high alert, fight-or-flight mode that is not conducive to a relaxed focus or to peak performance. Performance anxiety obstructs the relaxed focus that produces the highest level of skill.

Discourages Physical Fitness
One of the worst side effects of over-emphasizing competition in the learning process is that many people develop an aversion to exercise and athletics. In school, children are at times forced to exercise and compete in ways that are stressful, not fun. Not surprisingly, many develop an aversion to exercise and sports. Physical Education can become a miserable chore for those who don’t do well in competitive environments, especially when they have learned to see themselves as losers from their earliest experiences. I believe this to be a factor in our current epidemic of obesity. Ask most people with a weight problem about their experiences in school physical education programs and organized athletics, and you will hear a litany of tales of woe.

Increases Self-inflicted Injuries
Another liability arising from the premature introduction of competition in sports is that habitual repetition of incorrect physical mechanics increases the chances of injury. An improperly performed mechanical action – a pitch in baseball or a serve in tennis – irritates and stresses muscles and joints. Such an action, repeated over and over, often leads to injury. It is a version of the well-known repetitive stress syndrome. Developing skill requires mastering proper form, which allows our actions to be more efficient and comparatively effortless. When we start competing prematurely, we shift our focus from skill development to winning however we can; and proper form is usually the first casualty.

Competitive sports, especially at higher levels, require exercise and conditioning to excel. At all levels, from recreational to professional, overuse is a significant issue, particularly for less naturally talented players. The only way to make up for a lack of talent is to train harder. And intense training takes its toll on our bodies. We accept as inevitable that our joints are going to break down as we age. But this “natural” event is greatly hastened if we push our bodies too hard. Look at the number of ex-athletes, from ballet dancers to football players, who can barely walk later in life. Pushing ourselves to extremes to compete is detrimental to our health.

Chapter 2—A Competitive Learning System, Part 1

Our social framework is based on competition, so it follows that our educational system is also competitively based. Hardly anyone can imagine sports, education, business, or politics without competition. From a young age, we find that virtually every activity in which we participate includes some form of competition. Whether in school or sports, shortly after we get involved, we face an opponent in one form or another. When we’re graded on a curve, when we take the PSAT to prepare us for the SAT, and even when we are asked to raise our hands if we know the answer, we are competing against other students. Few of us question the competitive approach. We tend to think of it as organic and essential; people must compete to succeed, the logic goes, so they had better get used to the pressures of competition from the start. The problem is not with competition per se, but how and when we go about having people compete.

Premature Competition
Introducing competition into the learning process prematurely — before we master fundamental skills — causes many problems. This is perhaps most obvious in the field of sports, so I will use that arena to illustrate this concept. It is not uncommon to see five-year-olds playing competitive soccer games after two weeks of practice, which as a rule means two one-hour practices. What skill level can be achieved in two hours? Many teams practice very little together once they start playing their weekly game; often their weekly competition is their only practice. This is putting the cart before the horse! These children need to spend non-competitive time running around the field, having fun, kicking the ball to one another, getting fit and coordinated, practicing and developing their skills, and allowing cellular memory to pattern the basics into their body/minds before competition enters the picture.

This competitive approach is common in youth sports. In baseball I’ve seen seven-years-old pitchers who couldn’t throw the ball over the plate, and batters who couldn’t make contact with a slowly pitched ball. Why do we make these kids compete before they’ve learned the basic skills? One of the few sports where competition is postponed until fundamental skills have been developed is gymnastics. This is because gymnastics can be very dangerous, and the consequences of premature competition (before developing fundamental skills) are potentially severe.

Even when children aren’t competing against one another on a conscious level, they are often being pushed to get to the point where they can compete. This so called games-based approach to learning is widespread. Players are supposed to learn their skills while playing competitively. Indeed, some learning is going on during competition, but a lot of it negatively impacts a player’s development. Many skills are not being developed, and many less than optimal habits are being patterned into the physical, mental, and emotional cellular memory.

In the competitive system, winners are lionized; the rest are second-class citizens, often regarded as also-rans, or worse, losers. The world of competition is a jungle. Is it really a good idea to expose children to this jungle before they are prepared physically, mentally, and emotionally? It is hard enough even when they are prepared. The question to ask is whether the competitive system truly produces excellence, or just a set of winners of uncertain ability? With winning such a premium and so strongly desired, it would make sense at the very least to learn the essential skills of an activity before being thrust into competition. But that is not how we are taught.

Many assume that exposing children to competition at an early age prepares them for all the competition they will face throughout life. But as you will see, this is not the case. This is the drop-the-baby-in-the-deep-end-of-the-pool theory of learning. If the “baby” sinks instead of swimming, it is assumed, in the competitive mind-set, not to “have what it takes.” Putting people, especially children, into competition before they have developed effective skills, can be painful, even traumatic. Many will be scarred emotionally. The resulting embarrassment, shame or lowered self-esteem will hold them back in other areas of life, and diminish their chances of achieving their potential.

When a society places so much importance on winning, losing is often experienced as personal failure. We’ve all heard that it doesn’t matter if we win or lose, it’s how we play the game. But these hollow words do not reflect the reality we see all around us, and the message we are “told” in countless ways. The winner gets it all — the praise, the glory, the fame, and the fortune. Even young children can see and feel that it does matter whether we win or lose; and that there are real benefits to winning, and real consequences to losing.

Winning Versus Learning
The competitive approach to learning is widespread in all aspects of education. Children find themselves in a recital or a performance after taking only a few months of music or dance lessons. If children really know and can proficiently play or perform the material, no problem. If not, they are programming performance anxiety into their cellular memory. I know this from personal experience. From starting piano lessons at age six, to playing drums in the band in high school, I was put into performances before I was confident of the material. Those experiences sowed the seeds of a lack of confidence, and performance anxiety. Academically, it’s the same: Children are given material to learn, and then tested and graded before they have really learned that material. What are we really testing and teaching by putting children into competition prematurely? And what are children really learning in this way?

This is the trial by fire or school-of-hard-knocks approach to learning: “We learned the hard way; you have to learn the hard way. Life isn’t fair, life is tough!” Maybe life is tough. Do we need to make it tougher on principle? Maybe we did learn the hard way. Do we have to make learning harder for everyone? How about discovering what may actually be the best way to learn? The school-of-hard-knocks approach does push a small percentage of people to excel, primarily from fear of the consequences of failure, or perhaps an overweening desire to win or to be number one. But most people fail to achieve their potential in a competitive environment. Even those who succeed often pay a steep price, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Yet this is the environment in which we continue to raise and educate our children. What are we passing on?

When learning becomes a contest, the focus shifts from learning skills to winning contests, and to fears of losing. When being a winner is so important, it can’t help taking precedence over developing the skills necessary to achieve excellence. And this is a fundamental problem in our competitive culture.

Positive Effects of a Competitive System
There is no disputing the fact that competition has produced many tangible benefits in people’s lives. It encourages us to work toward goals and develop concentration, perseverance, motivation and ambition. It can help us hone our skills, raise performance levels, strive for excellence, build character, and even foster camaraderie and teamwork while channeling aggression in a less destructive direction. We have seen the benefits of a competitive approach in industry where competing companies, teams and individuals stimulate higher levels of creativity and leap-frog off each other, inventing or designing better and better products and technologies. Such competition has fostered rapid growth and accelerated technological breakthroughs in many fields. A clear example of competition motivating accelerated development is the space race between the United States and the U.S.S.R. back in the 1960’s that resulted in the U.S. sending the first man to the moon.

Yet despite all the benefits of a competitive paradigm, I suggest that our next stage of evolution will enable us to achieve far more benefits through non-competition, which includes a skill-to-mastery based focus, and a higher principle of cooperation.

This chapter focuses mainly on the negative side effects of competition. (The benefits of competition have been actively promoted for centuries, if not millennia. We all know them quite well.) It will show why the premature introduction of competition into the learning process produces far more negative than positive effects. In fact, if competition were a drug, the Food and Drug Administration would ban it for having too many adverse side effects!