Unit 1 - Preparatory Lessons

1.3.1 COMPETITION MATTERS - Suzanne Sievert

SYNOPSIS

Suzanne recalls the incident where her five year old kid participated in pumpkin decorating contest at his school. He made a wild combination of carving, paint and feathers to decorate the pumpkin. All the participants had decorated splendidly that judges had a difficult time to choose a winner. To resolve the problem of choosing a winner the judges had awarded same colour ribbon to all the entries so as to convey the participants that everyone are the winner and had
done a great job.

The declaration of the judges made the author worry that the school was sending a wrong message that losing in a contest is a difficult task rather than accepting it and working hard to win in the future. The trend followed by the school judges noticed by the author lately was that declaring every entry as the winner was done by considering the fragile nature of the kids to handle the defeat. But, she says that without a potential winner, a game contest loses it excitement and this she proves with her own experience where she bought a game and played with her kids twice and everyone won this game. The game caught the dust as it did not had the incentive to keep playing.

The author further says that competition is symbiotic with motivation and key to our success as adults thus developing the sportsman spirit. We need to foster this attitude in our children. This she explains with an event where she makes her kids get into a race to see who gets dressed first. She declared “good sport” to the kid who accepted the defeat and the kid was proud. She explains that a loss in a competition helps kids to learn from the mistakes and search several alternatives to improve and find a way to win in the future.

Suzanne states that if her kid had been the judge he definitely would have picked the winner. The competition was a big let down for the kids as the excitement to win the contest was lost but, the kid made himself satisfied by choosing snowman as the winner and accepted his defeat.

Competition is the best way to test all children’s abilities and performance at school. She states that children are not fragile and they have the ability to face defeat. As in the article, if the boy had been the judge, he would have picked the snowman as the winner and satisfied everyone.

Model questions (Book Back Questions)

1. How is the message conveyed in the lesson?
The message is conveyed through the author’s real-life experiences with her children. She explains the importance of competition using school events and games at home.

2. What is the trend that the author has noticed lately?
The author has noticed that schools declare all children as winners. This is done to protect children from feeling sad when they lose.

3. How does the author show the importance of a potential winner in the story?
The author explains it by giving an example of a game where everyone always won. Because there was no real winner, the game became boring and was not played again.

4. Comment on the observation of the kindergartener, “Well, I think the snowman won”.
This shows that the child can think clearly and judge fairly. It also shows that children can accept defeat and understand who really deserves to win.

5. “It has sat gathering dust ever since” – Why?
The game had no competition or excitement because everyone won every time. So, the children lost interest and stopped playing it.