Sir Ken Robinson on Competition

When Stephen Noonoo interviewed Sir Ken Robinson about his newest book, these are some of the things Robinson had to say about education and competition:

"Competition in itself is not a toxic dynamic. On the contrary, it can be very constructive and a great motivator. But like most things, there are good and bad versions of it. Where kids are being pitted against each other on the basis of spurious forms of testing, it sets up a false sense of antagonism between people that I think we should avoid. And it’s also been a big problem with the whole movement in standardized testing that the schools and districts have been forced to compete against each other for resources...

...as in most things, it’s about getting the balance right. It’s not one thing or the other but it does amaze me sometimes that you have to speak in defense of collaboration, where but for collaboration we would have no social systems to speak of and the ones we had wouldn’t last very long. Rather than thinking of education only in terms of subjects and content to be learned, we should also be thinking about the many skills and competencies and attributes that we hope education will help to encourage in our kids...

Education is a system in the sense that it’s organized on a grand scale, but it manifests itself every day in the actions and reactions of living people. Education happens in classrooms and studios and on playing fields and in school buildings and sometimes not in school buildings—in home schools. It manifests itself as relationships and feelings and achievements."

Source: “Sir Ken Robinson’s Next Act: You are the System and You Can Change Education,” by Stephen Noonoo, March 21, 2018, EdSurge blog

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