Well-being is not a “soft” concept, but a “good” concept. Well-being is not a one-point-in-time concept but a continuous lifelong concept.

–  The Paradoxes of Student Well-Being in Singapore

Why do people compete with each other?

–  Zero to One

A paradox, according to Merriam Webster is, “something (such as a situation) that is made up of two opposite things and that seems impossible but is actually true or possible”. Is it a paradox that students who have to meet rigorous academic expectations are also well in every sense of the word? In Singapore, the answer is yes.

This is the view of Ng Pak Tee who is a decorated, if the term applies also to academics, Associate Professor at the National Institute of Education. In one edition of an acclaimed educational research publication series, Dr Ng has been described as one of the “world’s leading intellectual authorities on educational leadership and change”.

Dr Ng was sharing his views on what well-being means and how it is and can continue to be achieved in what may be perceived as a high-demand system. He says many systems around the world are increasingly introducing some form of stress relief programme in schools, for example through infusing mindfulness in lessons. He does not seem convinced that this form of intervention would move the needle in terms of stress load and is of the view that ideally changes should be made “upstream” such that students feel more joy than stress in learning.

He shares the examples of the slew of wellness programmes students have access to and how emphasis has been shifting towards learning and away from grades. To be sure, grades are an indication of learning and are beneficial not just for qualifying to a next level but also for development of the whole person – more on this later. Grades are emphasised less in two ways. First, exams are being removed at certain stages and levels. Second, the consequences of grades are not what they may have been before.

Examples of wellness initiatives (which take into account real world requirements and for learning to be joyful) include, Character and Citizenship Education, Cyber Wellness Programmes and Outdoor Education, Applied Learning Programme and the Values in Action Programme and the Programme for Active Learning.

Dr Ng says that even so, there is still tension between performance requirements and a perception of holistic development. He rounds up by saying hard work, competition and demands are not incompatible with wellness and are in fact, part of wellness and that students need to develop grit and resilience because the world outside school will require it.

There are different views on competition. Some say it is a fact of life and others say it is only so because we make it so. Some say that competition makes you stronger and others say competition is detrimental.

In a trademark case, a judge wrote that there “is nothing unconscionable about competition” and explained that imitation is not a lesser strategy than innovation. Peter Thiel who is the founder of PayPal among other entities, has another view which is that imitation makes the pie smaller for everybody and that it wastes resources and energy. Taleb who wrote the Black Swan among other books on complexity, is also of the view that hard circumstances make us weaker and not stronger but he goes on to say that the reason it appears like it makes us stronger is that it brings out the fight which was always in us even before adversity.

How can we think about competition or comparison? Rather than saying competition is altogether bad, we can think about how we compete, what we are competing for and what happens when we win or lose.

Peter Thiel cited Shakespeare and Marx who each had differing views on why people compete. Shakespeare said people compete because they are alike and Marx suggested that people compete because they are different. Thiel himself suggests it is possible to avoid competition altogether because “people lose sight of what matters and focus on their rivals instead” and says sometimes the fight is just not worth it.

Competition cannot be bad if the focus is on the self – I don’t want to be better than you but I want to be the best I can be and if you do better than me, I want to know, if I can reach where you are, not to outdo you but to outdo me. In this view of things, it really doesn’t matter how high you reach – the higher the better because it gives me something to aspire towards.

Competition can be bad if it reduces harmony and discourages cooperation. Both Thiel and Malcolm Gladwell who wrote David and Goliath among other books on performance touched on this. Gladwell talks about how we should change the rules or use wit if we cannot win in the conventional way. This is where things get strange according to Thiel – focus could shift from winning to making the other lose.

Thiel says, all of us are unique in some way and with sufficient courage to find out what that is, we can avoid competitive situations because there won’t be a need to focus on posturing and overplay superficial differences because each of us will be the unique answer to a unique need.

Having dealt with the why and what of competing, we now come to the what – what is it we are competing for? Is competition even necessary to get it? Shawn Michaels as mentioned elsewhere in this blog, won the Royal Rumble by not competing. In an article in The New Yorker, Wiener suggests that Thiel read Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand’s protagonist Howard Roark did not believe in competing either and instead focused on developing his own strengths and doing what he felt he could do well.

And here, we come back to students’ well-being. It may not be performance requirements which are causing stress if they are causing stress but what we think meeting or not meeting those requirements at any single point in time would mean for the rest of time.

With multiple pathways to differing definitions of success, it may well be that the stakes at one point in time are more apparent than real. To the extent that competition places a demand on one to be the genuine best possible, it cannot be bad.

It can even be good so long as one is on the high road.

The Brain Dojo