Competition for high grades seriously limits the quality of learning at all levels of education

The world is fraught with competition. All humans, both young and old are involved in the rat race of life. In this race, everybody strives for higher standard of living, increased income, and more comfortable life. Though, competition is good as it helps one discover and transcend one’s limit, but the quality of work suffers. Ergo, as competition sets in to education, it stymies the quality of learning at all levels of education.

Some will quibble by saying competition is good as it helps one discover one’s limit and set a pace to go beyond the limit. This might be true to some extent as competing with others help exhume one's strength and weakness. For example, student taking test in class and comparing his results with other student. This helps a student to discover his weaknesses or lapses, thereby revealing where to focus on for such student to improve.

But, on the other hand, competing for high grades seriously impairs quality of learning. Parents and education system foments student to go after high grades and scores rather than seeking deeper knowledge and understanding. This leads to competition as students are faced with the battle of racing – against other student – to get higher marks. For instance, student in geography class, reading and preparing for exams. All students’ level of understanding are not the same. Some comprehend better than others, but all students are evaluated on the same set pattern. These leads to competition and thus, the quality of education suffers as students who find it to comprehend will just cram and reproduce in the exam hall. Thus, deterring the main purpose of education being served.

Furthermore, teachers and students target exam dates while being hindered with bulky courses to cover within limited time. This leads to competition as students who have the ability to cram and reproduce faster within a limited time will be given preference to students who seek more knowledge and deeper understanding. the purpose of education will definitely be served if students seek deeper knowledge and understanding as educational institutions will begets competent, innovative and independent professionals. While on the other hand, fomenting student to cram and reproduce in order to attain higher grades will aversely hamper quality of education as incompetent professionals will engendered by the education system. As a result, the society will be filled with quack medical practitioners, charlatan engineers, bogus lawyers, amongst many others.

In conclusion, students’ competition for higher grades have an adverse effect on the quality of education as the will result to education system producing incompetent citizens. Thus, evaluation system of the educational institution should be reformed by developing other means of evaluating students’ deeper understanding of a course, level of students’ knowledge about a course and student’s ability of concept forming. If this reformation is done, the true essence of education will be served as educational institution will churn innovative and independent professionals that will contribute massively to the growth of the society.