The unhealthy side of academic competition

When it comes to education, high levels of competitiveness are increasing with each passing day. Every year, we hear about a handful of students earning national and international awards despite high grade thresholds and difficult syllabuses. When we see just how much competitive behaviour is rewarded, it urges us not just to be well-read, but to specifically be better than the people around us.

While competitiveness amongst students can encourage more academic diligence, its darker side warrants more discussion. What we don't hear about every year are the students debilitated by the suffocating atmosphere.

Since our initial school years, we see authority figures applaud those who do well on tests and reprimand those who do not. Over the years, we begin to tie our self-worth to numbers on test papers. Report cards begin to represent our worth as people to ourselves. When our self-perception is so drastically affected by grades, someone else surpassing us academically can have dire consequences.

For students falling behind, it breeds feelings of intellectual inferiority. Even outside classrooms, someone who consistently performs worse than their friends can feel stupid or inferior. Grades are largely regarded as indicators of how successful a person might be in life, which can make students unnecessarily anxious about their future. Constant pressure from parents can make one feel like they'll never amount to anything and work minimum wage their entire lives, just because they got a lower score than some distant relative's child.

When self-esteem issues arise from such a central aspect of your life, they can cause self-sabotaging tendencies. Students can trap themselves in procrastination cycles and avoid studying, thinking "it's pointless anyway, so why even try?" Even when they end up accomplishing more than previously in class, self-sabotage takes other forms, such as undermining achievements. When all you've known is comparison, you'll engage in constant comparison yourself. Even when someone raises a D to a B, they don't stop thinking of themselves as lesser than the person scoring straight As. This is further compounded by the lack of awareness around mental health, where neurodivergent students may struggle a lot more in such competitive environments.

On the other side of the spectrum are students at the top of their class. Academic competition is usually fiercest at the upper quartiles. The obsession with performing not just objectively well, but better than everyone else, can bring out the worst in us. When competing at the highest level, burnouts are common. Being infatuated with scoring the highest leaves little room for other pastimes.

High achievers bear the brunt of intense competition as well. When all their work occasionally doesn't amount to academic perfection for any number of reasons, it can make them question their own self-worth. The sudden feeling of losing control over something you tied all your self-respect to is nothing short of terrifying, and can lead to severe self-esteem issues.

Regardless of ability, cheating has become a common occurrence specifically because of competition. Students who don't care about studying can take extreme measures just to copy off of someone else. Despite knowing that they don't deserve the marks, seeing them on the results sheet satisfies a certain internalised craving, caused by years of conditioning that makes us value marks so highly.

Competition is irreversibly baked into education. But that shouldn't stop us from adopting healthier attitudes towards ourselves and other people, to ease the struggle for all fellow students. There's no end to the ways this can be done.

Evaluating your life goals and deciding exactly how important grades are in that scheme is a start. That way, you'll feel less pressured by other people to obtain the absolute best scores, and be satisfied if you're on the track you've set for yourself. For example, you won't need a Country Highest in Mathematics if your goal is to be a successful engineer someday, as there are easier paths towards that goal.

It's also important to break out of the internalised idea that report cards represent your worth as a person. No singular thing does. Re-prioritising and thinking long-term can help cope with peer and parental pressure. While healthy competition might be hard to maintain, you can't go wrong with comparing yourself against your previous self only, and no one else.

At the end of the day, we're all united by the same struggle, and it's important to be compassionate and supportive towards everyone else. In a system pitting us against one another, we need to have each other's backs.

Aranyo Rishi Chowdhury is a student at S. F. X. Greenherald International School