Good Grades, Lost Childhood: The Cost of School Competition

It's almost like everything in this world is a competition... Wealth, fashion, experience, not just education. I think we are yet to even see more rush with these things and people can't seem to remove themselves from competing, it's like an inbuilt thing. We want to be the best, we want to be different, we want to win but somehow we all begin to do and look the same.

Education is one aspect of life that I grew up to know it's very important for people to get the experience, become something great in life and make money. The schools of those days focused more on their students actually learning to genuinely pass their exams from the knowledge they've gained and not just the people faking it.

But today, we have more people in the schools for the certificate rather than students in the school to actually learn and understand what is taught. We also have more teachers teaching for the pays than teachers actually there for the main purpose of producing students who will make differences in the world when they graduate.

I've not had the experience of being in a school where the competition is so intense that students resort to unethical things to keep up but I've heard a lot about them and I've seen quite a few in the movies so it's definitely happening in our world today. I remember a movie I watched where they actually labeled each student according to their ranks to show top to bottom.

I watched how each class of students tried so hard to go to the next class of students, the top students were almost like robots learning because they studied so hard and resorted to caffeines to keep their grade high. The school from outside was perfect and won countless awards because of their hardworking students.

But inwardly, there were cases of students running mad, some commit suicide, countless were being bullied based on their ranks and everyone of them aside the dullest ones seem to be doing too much for the grades, from drugs to starving to being isolated from other students. Many didn't get to actually enjoy being students.

If there is one thing I wish I enjoyed more in my educational years, is I would have spent more time being a human first before a student even in school hours. I studied way more than I played or spend time with friends and it's all because I wanted good grades because I had friends who were doing well, I wanted to keep up with them.

The unsaid truth about schools being competitive is, students don't get to actually have emotional support, social connections and fun as much as they should because there's an invisible ranking to meet up with. There's so much to learn than just books in school but students won't thrive healthily if there is competition in grades.

I don't think it's allowed for schools to be competitive especially when it gets to the point of students resorting to drugs and other unhealthy activities to keep up. If it's possible, students should make the choice to be serious with their studies or not, not being forced to compete long before they go into the real world.