Would that I had come earlier to the United States!
Columbia University’s Pierre-André Chiappori, as cited by Guy Sorman in the City Journal, says:
“Academic life in the U.S. is determined by competition at all levels, he adds. ‘It’s often said that American universities recruit only the best among the Europeans. I would say instead that we become better because we are immersed in permanent competition. I would have been better at what I do if only I had come earlier to the U.S.’”
What if our schools were to accept his judgment, that we become better at what we do because of the competition? It’s certainly true of athletics, which is all about competition. Why might it not also be true of learning, say, math or history?
But, whether or not it’s true is for more and more of us no longer a pressing issue. For we have become, not only in our schools, but also in the way we raise our children, afraid of competition.
We’re afraid of turning off or away all those who can’t or won’t or don’t want to compete. And with reason, for that does happen.
And it can get ugly, as one can readily see in a large family with competing children. For there will always be winners and losers. And because of this we go out of our way and try to lessen the harm done, by such things as having all the children speak up in turn at the family dinner table, by being sure that all the kids in the classroom are raising their hands and asking questions, and by countless other similar esteem promoting actions.
But of course our efforts are mostly in vain. Competition is, as they say, in our genes, and our memes. It’s a part of everything we do. We can’t do away with it.
Rather than try we ought to accept the truth of what Chiappori says, and allow the few to enjoy the great benefits, to themselves and the larger organization of which they are a part, that come from competition, while trying at the same time to lessen the downside, the discouragement that will probably fall upon the many.
In any case, that’s reality. That’s also what’s going on between nations as they compete for global market share. And because of the competition, and the greater productivity and greater wealth arising therefrom, hundreds of millions who have only known poverty in their lives are now working and earning money and becoming the first of their families to move up into the middle classes.
