1.1 COMPETITION MATTERS.

UNIT-I 

 

1.1 COMPETITION MATTERS.

BY    SUZANNEN SIEVERT

 

BBA & BHM ENGLISH STUDY MATERIAL

 

 

INTRODUCTION: Competition Matters is an article written by Suzanne Sievert. It was written by her after realising the importance of sportsman spirit. In this article she tries to bring the need to teach the kids to accept the future and learn from it so as to win in future.

 

CONTENT: Suzane recalls the incident were her 5 year kid participate 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 accepting it and working hard to win in the future. The trend followed by the school judges was noticed by the author lately 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 didn’t had the incentive to keep playing.

The author further says that competition is symbiotic with motivation and key to our success as adults thus develop the sportsman spirit. This attitude we need to foster it in our children. This she explains with the event were she race her kids to see who can get 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 the way to win in future.

Suzanne states that if her kid would have been the judge he definitely would have picked the winner. The competition was a big letdown 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.

CONCLUSION: Suzanne is the best way to test all children’s abilities and performance at school. All children get worried before every competition because of the final grades, or in other words “The winners”. Competitive spirit is key to our success as adult. Suzanne determined that “children do not suffer from competition in fact, they benefit from it”.