Deleterious Competition

The most successful in school and in life are increasingly like this. Only a few exceptional ones have the confidence to go beyond themselves and help others.

We have taken competition to the extreme. We are not becoming better by competing this way. Beware of the Tragedy of the Commons down the road.

I am glad Heng Swee Keat recognized this. We have been complaining about this for many years.

We are fortunate that our kids never needed to compete this way to do well enough. They could have been among the best even the one with disabilities but what for? That's a tunnel vision of life and truly myopic. It also smacks of too little faith and hubris that success can be engineered.

I wonder how long enough people will realize the futility of competing this way. I hope we do not learn the hard way.

Competition which weaken social bonds is stupid competition. The rules and habits of how people compete to get to the top must change or we become dysfunctional like many other places.