Nicholas Craig column

Apr 20 2007 By Nicholas Craig, The Journal

For schools and colleges, it's now the countdown to exams and sports days. Competition is the name of the game. Scary, knuckle-biting, adrenaline inducing tests that measure you at a given time against your peers are looming on the horizon.

Yet for many youngsters, there will be no competitive sports on offer this term, and examinations will have been replaced by coursework and assessment.

The fear of psychologically damaging young minds has led to some schools insisting on an `everyone's a winner' policy.

How on earth these pottily politically correct views will translate into a successful business career for the young innocents in years to come beats me.

Competition is ruthless, hard, targeted and sometimes unfair, but it works.

In the schoolroom or the workplace, competition is part of life. We like to compete to win, and we have to come to terms with losing. Shielding youngsters from the misery of coming last in the sack race will not motivate them to try better next year, or to focus on their other strengths if they stand no chance of winning at anything.

Most of us want to be the best, and when we are young we are naïve enough to admit it. When we do well we are praised, and that feeling of success and achievement can inspire long-term ambitions more forcibly than any well-meaning careers talks.

The clodhopping approach of some examinations and school sports is admittedly unfair to some, but has to be better than the cult of mediocrity encouraged by uncompetitive sports and exam-free curriculums.

Competition in business forces us to innovate, bring down prices and to be aware of competitors' strengths and weaknesses. In our personal lives, there are unconscious one-upmanship games being played out all around us.

When we relax, many millions of us choose to watch ruthless competition television shows in which the losers are ridiculed for their lack of talent in front of large audiences.

However much they may yearn for post traumatic stress relief, they just have to cope and get on with it.

Whether we like it or not, we are competitive animals who respond to targets, deadlines and the chance to prove that we can do better than anyone else. Basically, it's all about winning, not only taking part.

The sooner schools realise that five year olds are probably aware of that too, the better.