Competition
Again part of the problem here arises from the way people think about competition as a good, or perhaps more often a bad thing that plays a role in schooling, but are none too clear about what they are thinking of. But perhaps the more important aspect of the problem here is the evaluative side: does competition, or the other things people are thinking of, deserve endorsement or condemnation or is it a matter of indifference? To answer these questions, we need to reflect on the aims we have for these parts of the school system.
Kleinig begins his discussion by criticizing an account offered by another philosopher of education. If you can, it is worth comparing Kleinig's discussion with the one criticized, which can be found in Dearden's Problems in Primary Education, ch. 9.
While doubting its utility, Kleinig begins from Dearden's attempt to provide a traditional set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for A and B to be in competition for X.1 Dearden offers the following:
Dearden himself allows that condition (iii) only applies to conscious competition, since A and B might not know they were rivals for X. He stresses the centrality of condition (ii), and notes that competition is distinguished from (outright) conflict by a background of rules or conventions.
The difficulty of giving such traditional analyses can be seen from some of the points Kleinig makes. Condition (ii) breaks down when A and B can share a prize in a dead heat. I think one could also doubt condition (i) if any weight is put upon actual wanting — Dearden's comment suggests that what he needs here is simply that A and B are unable simultaneously to satisfy themselves. Even more basic is the fact that there can be competitions with only one entrant so that the interpersonal issues are in a way contingent, though no doubt none the less important.2
Kleinig refines Dearden's point about not knowing whether one is in competition by suggesting a further contrast between simply being in competition (whether you know it or not) and acting competitively. This is important since we often structure things so that people are in fact in competition with each other and the justice of such arrangements is a separate question from the morality of acting competitively.
Kleinig also draws our attention to the important fact that people (including obviously children in schools) often have no choice about being thrust into competitive structures. This is a very different situation from that of someone who voluntarily goes in for a competition. (Here again we see the pervasiveness of the issue of compulsory schooling for our reflections about education.)
Kleinig's discussion also raises some other issues that might be worth noting. He suggests distinguishing competition and rivalry by reference to their foci — competition aims at gaining X, a prize, whereas rivalry involves an attempt to outdo another person. As he notes, some happenings can involve both. He also makes an important point to the effect that mutual acceptance of a set of rules is not the same as co-operation. (This arises in a somewhat unfair discussion of Dearden's reference to the rules and conventions that govern competition and distinguish it from all-out conflict. Dearden stresses the way that members of a team do have to co-operate for the team to win; members of opposing teams do not in the same way co-operate.3) A further empirical point is that the existence of rules and conventions can easily blind us to unfairness in the context in which they operate.
The moral place of competition
Perhaps more important than getting a precise account of competitive practices is to ask ourselves what should be their place in schooling. Here the distinction between putting people in competition with each other and encouraging people to act competitively is important. If the former is unjustified in a particular context, the latter can hardly be defended.
Perhaps the most obvious objection to encouraging acting competitively is the idea that it is inherently selfish. But as Kleinig argues, this is not necessarily so. What is true is that acting competitively is (Kleinig says usually) acting self-interestedly, and in such a way that others will not obtain something they might want. One might do this to win money for a charity, but it is still possible to object to the self-assertion it contains. But perhaps few would wish to object here. (What of course is also true is that much competitive action is self-regarding and often selfishly so [i.e. manifesting disproportionate self-regard].)
More significant is the question with regard to putting people willy nilly into competition, especially for things that are not necessarily restricted. Dearden notes that there is no requirement that only a certain number can be educated, so that that goal need not be conceived as a prize. He concedes that very often children are "motivated" to learn by presenting things as a competition. As Kleinig argues, when this leads to damage to one's self-esteem it would seem rather difficult to justify. Or equally when it leads to pride and disdain — cf. Jane Austen's remark on two well-trained young ladies, "it is not very wonderful that with all their promising talents and early information, they should be entirely deficient in the less common acquirements of self-knowledge, generosity, and humility."4 (Once again, the exigencies of compulsory schooling raise their ugly heads.)
There are of course various arguments for competition, most perhaps depending in one way or another on supposed facts about the motivating power of prizes. Certainly for people brought up in a competitive and uncaring environment, prizes and the cut and thrust of competition seem desirable. There may well be a biological (innate) basis for some such dispositions5 but we need not concern ourselves overmuch about this since we regularly mould our biological inheritance into cultural modes that look very different. We could extend the range of co-operative endeavour if we wished, and we can find people motivated by things other than prizes or the glory associated with winning them.
While being educated need not be an exclusive privilege, societies are not usually willing to provide it equally for all. There are then questions of how socially created scarcities are to be handled. Dearden notes that there are many ways to decide who should benefit from, say, advanced schooling: money; patronage; lottery; competitive examinations; .... He claims that the last option is preferable since it is fairest (depending most on how the person now is in him/herself) and most efficient (since it selects those most able to profit from the resources available). The former judgement may illustrate the earlier point of allowing rules to blind one to unfairnesses ignored by the rules (and thus we enter into the whole question of educational opportunities); the latter is properly empirical, and the facts may not support competitive examinations as much as many would like to think. In general educational institutions are not very sensitive to variations amongst their input (within a given band, at least). And I think it is fair to say that those institutions that have experimented with various kinds of lottery have not in general been shown to be much worse off.
1. Offering such a set of conditions is one of the main ways of defining a term in traditional philosophy.
2. This is not the same as Kleinig's own objection that Dearden disallows competition with oneself — I am not much impressed with this latter notion, especially since it is always possible to see oneself as two "selves" (me last week versus me now; or me with my good inclinations versus me with my bad ones) to fit Dearden's schema.
3. Although they might, to give each other a good game, as Meakin suggests at 20 Journal of Philosophy of Education 63 (1986).
4. Mansfield Park, ch. 2.
5. This would not be disproved by young children failing to be competitive, cf. puberty.
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© Ed Brandon, 1992, 2001. HTML prepared using 1st Page 2000, last revised June 21st, 2001.