Schools should encourage students to be competitive in order to prepare them for adulthood. Discuss.

A school is usually considered a place where a child matures. It promotes the student to have a specific mindset to develop themselves for the preparation for life. Students aged 13 to 17 are at the last stage before becoming adults. During this stage, teenagers develop the most with the guidance of their friends, family members and teachers. In this essay, I agree that schools should foster healthy competition between their students.

A competition helps students to strengthen their mental capacity and step out of their comfort zones. It makes sure that all the students improve themselves when they are exposed to high-performance peers. There are many more aspects that boost a child’s skills, not only in sports but towards education. They are capable of developing self-confidence, resilience and also overcoming stage fright.

It also works well for a teenager who is about to give university entrance exams, such as JEE Mains, JEE Advanced and SAT are some of the popular ones in India. When the same teenager searches for a job, only the best ones get the opportunity to work for top companies. To build the students to have a competitive mindset, they can challenge others to get what they want.

Communication also plays a vital role in competition. If a shy person struggles to open up, even though she may have the best skills, she may still not be able to be productive in a team collaboration. But on the other hand, if we have a confident student, he may end up in a good position in a company.

However, during competitions, there are many students who aren’t always capable of winning the competitions, and so do malpractices such as cheating and dishonesty. The cheating could be the help provided by the student’s parents in order to win, or by asking the top student to leak answers. The students who aren’t good at anything then can never get anything useful, cause they didn’t do any hard work. Imagine a study that found 84% of students aren’t capable of getting anything without hard work. In the real world, or in a job, a task is assigned to one person. So if these skills aren’t learnt before, then they may not be useful. Nobody will be able to help you at that moment. So you may become stressed out. The Office for National Statistics’ recent report reveals that 66% of teenagers aren’t ready for adulthood before graduation. Failing in a competition should not be too harsh on the students. It should be the time when they reflect on themselves, to know what went missing, what criteria they need to be aware of before the next competition.

Encouraging a healthy, fair and well-managed competition, where all their efforts are valued and appreciated, can prepare students for adult challenges. However, schools should foster teamwork more than individual competitions.