Victory Versus Value

I took my daughters, Ella and Sophia, bowling last month. They were beating me for most of the game. I was shocked at how bad I was. "I can't believe I'm losing to a couple of kids," I repeated over the course of the evening.

I won by four pins thanks to a lucky strike off the bumper (yes, the bumper) on the last frame. Sophia, 5, seemed mildly upset and wondered why she didn't win. Ella wasn't bothered. "I just wanted to have fun," she said.

Sophia's interest in winning and Ella's preference to have fun made me wonder: Is competition good or bad for kids?

In the adult world, success tends to grace those who work harder than their peers. Competition drives the open market and encourages growth. It provides incentive to create better products, train harder or learn more. A company's ability to succeed is predicated on hiring better employees and developing better systems than the other companies.

But for those who are more inclined to cooperate than compete, having rivals is stressful and can even inhibit participation. My wife, Tanya, for example, prefers collaboration to competition and avoids situations that promote a win-or-lose mentality. I play basketball; she prefers yoga.

Things change when we talk about kids, whose goals lean toward intellectual and emotional growth, not the almighty dollar. Some experts say that competing for better grades in schools actually detracts from a student's ability to succeed.

According to Alfie Kohn, an author of 12 books on parenting and education and an outspoken critic of our fixation with grades and test scores, competition in schools is harmful. Kohn quotes studies illustrating that a child's sense of self-worth is defined by external sources. By focusing on winning the prize instead of performance quality, their inherent sense of value becomes a function of victory or defeat. The more a child competes, says Kohn, the more they need to compete to continue to feel good about themselves. A vicious cycle.

But competition is a reality in our society. From education to business and sports to relationships, we compete. For one to rise to the top, another must fill the vacuum at the bottom. The cost of the resultant hierarchy is that there will always be more losers than winners. Is it possible to skew this theory so more kids become the latter?

In a world where competition is unavoidable but cooperation is critical, parents need to play the game. Maybe we should decide what's more important, victory or value. Otherwise, we need to find the middle ground between individual quality and productive collaboration. Surely it exists.

Competition has made our country great, and it always feels good to be recognized for superior efforts. But the greatest triumphs in our civilization's history - democracy, space exploration, city building, to name a few - were team efforts with many winners.

I'll remember that after my next gutter ball.