[ZeeBee]

Hmmm,

Of course your point was to provide evidence that competition was being "removed". But the majority of the doubts as to whether this was true were from people saying that Dr Schoonmaker's evidence was only anecdotal and that he needed to provide more statistically sound evidence. He attempted to do this in a later post (although a google search hardle constitutes solid evidence). Your adding one more piece of anecdotal evidence does almost nothing to support the position. I assume I don't need to explain why this is the case.

As to your comment "But if you think this will somehow make us more competitive, you can keep beleiving it, I won't stop you. " you are far too confident in your seemingly common-sense opinions. A simple glance at the league tables of national competitiveness (e.g. GDP produced per working hour) shows that the industrialised nations which score better than the US are those like Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands - nations which tend to stress cooperation and teamwork in their education systems - and which certainly put much less emphasis on competition than the US system. yet these nations are more competitive - much more in some cases.

There has actually been a lot of research into this subject - the majority of it captured by Alfie Kohn in his book "No Contest: The Case Against Competition". Now Kohn is an anti-competition advocate, so you can expect his writing to be biased against competition. But he does compile a very strong case by looking at the actual research evidence - rather than just twisting personal opinion and anecdotes into "proof" as so many other writers do. For example, he examines 122 studies on the question of whether competition or cooperation produces better results: Sixty-five studies found that cooperation promotes higher achievement than competition, eight found the reverse, and 36 found no statistically significant difference.

Now it could be that Kohn is twisting the research to meet his own needs (I personally have not read the original sources). But the fact is that he seems to have really done his homework. I doubt that you have done the same.

So as to your implication that I was burying my head in the sand by refusing to believe that increased competition in schools leads to increased national competitiveness - then if that means reasearching the available evidence to try to come up with a fact-based point of view - then yes, I will continue to do so.

ZB

Anyway, isn't it time we moved on from the first article. The second one is rather better in my opinion.