COMPETITION HAMPERS THE OVERALL DEVELOPMENT OF STUDENTS

Nowadays, our lives are filled with competition. Office employees compete to get promotions and thus better salaries which would increase their standard of living. Businessmen compete to get the best deals for themselves to lead a luxurious life. Students have to compete to prove their metal to their schools by performing exceptionally well in academics or sports or both. While competition may motivate students to work harder to perform better, it can also demotivate them to a great extent.

The focus has switched to rote learning and scoring well in exams rather than understanding the concepts and their practical application in reality. Such knowledge is superficial and useless as the students will be unable to apply the concepts that they have learnt in real life if they have simply mugged them up without understanding them. The thirst for knowledge is rapidly diminishing. Students are forgetting that the real aim of education is not to make them literate but to educate them in the true sense.

Competition is the main culprit behind increasing anxiety and depression among students. Toppers are anxious to score well in their exams and thus, meet the expectations of their friends, teachers and parents. If they fail to do so, they are easily overcome by depression. The students who are poor in academics are anxious to pass their exams to escape their mocking from their friends and the scolding from their parents and teachers. If they fail in their exams, they also tend to get depressed.

Sometimes, to top or to achieve the cut-off marks in the exam, students tend to get involved into malpractices like buying or stealing the exam question paper or cheating during the exam. In the process, their life is ruined completely.

To overcome the disadvantages of competition, it requires a collective effort by the students, teachers and parents. Students should cease comparing themselves with others and concentrate on improving their own performances. Parents should also not compare their children with others. Students should watch motivational videos and read good books which will keep them away from negative thoughts. Schools should conduct counselling sessions on a regular basis to boost students' confidence. Teachers should cease pressurizing students for good scores for the sake of the school's reputation. Together, we can definitely curb the disadvantages of competition and turn unhealthy competition into a healthy one.