Competition Will Destroy Us
by Amol Pai
Layout Editor
One of the defining characteristics of John Burroughs is the fact that it deemphasizes extrinsic academic competition as much as possible. We have no class rank, valedictorian, honor rolls, or any other academic honors. Indeed, policies discouraging academic competition are inherent in our school's philosophy, which reads: "We discourage the use of rewards, such as prizes and honor rolls, to motivate students; rather, we foster love of learning as an end in itself." Our school tries, through the nature of classes and grades, to downplay our outward competitive tendencies, and instead foster intrinsic competition as a means of learning.
Most students come to Burroughs to succeed and get an outstanding education. For some, "success" is defined as being the best in every subject, sport, and activity. As we all know, this is simply not possible at Burroughs. Ms. Fiala puts it best: "Seventh and eighth graders are the brightest kids from their classes, and sometimes it's hard for them to realize that they can't be the best at everything." Competing with yourself, she contends, will ultimately get you the most out of your learning experience.
Most students and teachers alike agree that class rank would hurt students in the college admissions process. Dr. Heinzel contends, "Having class rank would be unfair to the students. Being in the lower quarter academically at Burroughs is like being on the lower end of an Olympic team." Burroughs has about thirty National Merit semifinalists every year, which is about 30% of each class. These students are among the top 1% in the nation for this exam. Our students clearly do well academically compared with others, and it would not be fair to judge them in relation to one another accounting for this competition. A student, who is, for example, seventy-fifth in a class of one hundred could very well be among the top students in another, much larger school. If a college admissions officer at a selective university saw, for example, a student with a mediocre 75/100 class rank and did not realize that our school is very academically challenging with many extremely qualified students, the student would have a very difficult time getting in to that university. To downplay this disadvantage, Burroughs does not use rank, but instead a GPA system that does not compare a student's GPA to that of others.
Decades ago, Burroughs utilized the quintile system, in which students were ranked academically with regard to their quintile, or fifth of the class. Dr. Shahan abolished the system because it created unhealthy competition. In his words, "Fostering extrinsic competition would harm the school….Often the parents are the ones who get stressed about rank, thinking, ‘Why isn't my child number one?'" These parents put unnecessary pressure on the kids to add tenths to their GPAs. This, in turn, makes the student body more neurotic and promotes a cutthroat atmosphere at school.
Burroughs does a good job downplaying unhealthy academic competition, and I hope it continues to do so.