Education 2.0 Part 2 - Collaboration v/s Competition

What is the end goal of any form of education? That the participants should learn... learn the objectives set at the start of the course/class/session. How we set the goal for the participants sets the tone and governs how effectively the participants learn.

If we set the goal for the entire team rather than every individual, the participants will work towards ensuring that the entire team learns. However, in our current way of "teaching", we pitch them to do better than others, encouraging them to compete against each other rather than work collaboratively to learn, rewarding them to do better than others rather than help each other out.

I recently had the priviledge to perform in a group dance at the Sangeet of my friends' wedding. More than the function, I actually enjoyed the dance practice and rehearsal sessions. I am not a great dancer myself, yet I had an awesome time. And same was the case a couple of years back at the Sangeet of my brother's wedding. And when I reflect back on these sessions, I understood why they were so much fun and why I still remember all the steps, even the steps of the dances I was not a part of :-)

It was a team learning exercise. I picked up a few steps quicker while others were quicker in some other steps. But we all were helping each other, because the goal was to put up a good show, to mesmerize the audience! And that would have been possible only if all of us ensured that all of us are on the right track. We slowed down for others to pick up, it was like "Catch Up Mode On". When someone missed a session in which the choreographer taught us a step, he/she was brought up to speed in no time by the others.

Why can't we do the same in all forms of education!

Collaboration is always win-win whereas competition brings out a winner but also a loser. Yes, it could be debated that competition pushes an individual to perform better, but we need to reflect on whether it is an effective way to achieve the end goal of education i.e. all participants should learn and not just a select few.

We need to achieve the right balance of collaboration and competition when setting goals for the participants in any form of education. Consider a team sport such as football, cricket, hockey. It's a combination of both, collaboration within a team, competing against another team. So when it comes to education, let us set the goals for the entire class, let the entire class work as a team to learn and then the class be evaluated as a team as well. Let the class as a team compete maybe against another class or even better, the subject being taught. Lets conquer the subject! I still remember the dialogue my favourite teacher Hussain Sir used to tell us before exams - "Bete, phod dena exam" or "Smash the paper".

I am not a big fan of the grading system, but we still need to evaluate to ensure that the objectives have been achieved. However the intention of evaluation is not to "fail" anyone, but to improvise. I'll come back to that in more detail in a later post. But suppose, after evaluation we realize that the objectives haven't been met and we have to try again, the entire team will try again. This will reduce the fear of failure as well as make everyone realize that for one to succeed, one has to ensure that all succeed and not otherwise.

A very well said dialogue from the movie 3 Idiots goes like this..."Dost jab fail ho jaaye, toh dukh hota hai, but dost jab first aaye toh aur zyada dukh hota hai" i.e. "When your friend fails, you feel sad, but when your friend comes 1st, you feel even more sad". This sounds funny and as much as we enjoy laughing it out, this is the truth. This is what competition does. And this is what collaboration can overcome.