Children require, above all, encouragement for their efforts and abilities,
to know they are loved and valued for who they are, not what they achieve.
Maria Montessori

Put any group of parents together and you will often hear them discussing the achievements of their children. As a teacher, I am frequently asked “How is my child doing?” and I often wonder how best to answer that. When I reply, “your child is enjoying school and making friends” I usually find that this is not the answer that was being sought.  The answer that most parents want to hear is “your child is learning faster than most (if not all) of his class mates”.

It starts even before a child enters school – this idea that sooner is better. Conversations between parents abound about who’s child slept through the night first, who’s child ate solid food earliest, and who’s child crawled and walked and started talking first. It’s a pattern that we fall into without really examining what we are doing. We are saying that first is better, which is a lesson that we learned from our own parents and theirs before them.

Oh, but you say, we live in a competitive society. Children must learn to compete early or they will lose the race to success. But is this really true?

Competition inherently involves one person (or one team) winning while all the others lose.  The winner succeeds in gaining momentary feelings of self-worth and the losers experience lasting feelings of self-doubt. The winner must compete and win again and again to achieve that fleeting glory and eventually becomes dependent on external sources of evaluation to maintain his or her self-worth. You are only as good as your last race, spelling bee, or musical performance.

It is clear from the research that has been done (David Johnson, University of Minnesota) that not only is there no value to competition in the classroom, but that there is evidence that it impedes a child’s ability to learn and express himself creatively. Furthermore, the more complex the task, the more severely the negative effects of competition are felt.

Competition makes children nervous, which inhibits their ability to concentrate. It also precludes children learning from each other, since collaboration is counter-competitive.  Finally, competition distracts a child from the task and instead focuses his attention on the reward, so children become less interested in what they are supposed to be learning and performance declines. Children in a competitive environment come to view their peers as potential rivals. Competition increases feelings of aggression toward others.

One of the major strengths of the Montessori environment is it’s fostering of a collaborative learning environment – a skill that is highly valued in today’s working culture. Can we achieve the supposed goals of competition within that structure? Alfie Kohn, noted American educational writer has noted the following:

“In fact, not one of the benefits attributed to sports or other competitive games actually requires competition. Children can get plenty of exercise without struggling against each other. Teamwork? Cooperative games allow everyone to work together, without creating enemies. Improving skills and setting challenges? Again, an objective standard or one's own earlier performance will do.” Alfie Kohn, Working Mother, September 1987

One of the most difficult tasks we have as parents is to emotionally separate ourselves from our children. Remember, your child’s achievements are his own, the result of his innate ability, interest and hard work. We should encourage our children to do their best, to better their own achievements and to take pleasure in improving their performance but it is unnecessary, to say the least, to achieve success within a competitive structure.

So when your child’s teacher answers the question “how is my child doing”, the best response can only be “your child is enjoying school and making friends”.

Rosemary Gosse, M.A., AMI

Etonkids International Kindergarten