Is it necessary to make a change in the concept of excellence of our education system?

Andres Antonio

In our education system there are some problems when evaluating and rewarding the students
because the teachers are not conscious about the fact that every student has different abilities and
that some of them are better in art rather than in mathematics or other areas of knowledge. Taking
this into account, there is the need to see how this conception of excellence helps to elicit the
feeling of competition on students, creating a desire of being the best. However, there will always
be problems with this concept. At the end, changing this conception of excellence will create a
whole new recognition of other capacities in every student.

On the one hand, the current concept of excellence makes the students more competitive among
them. That means that when one student wins a prize for being the best in mathematics, the other
students want to receive a prize, too. As a result, they make the effort to be better, and by doing
so, be recognized as winners. This behavior is evident in schools when the students try to reach
the top five students list in the classroom.

On the other hand, competition can create a feeling of bullying or aggressiveness among students
because people are always looking to be seen as the “perfect ones”. This makes them start to act
as bullies to children who have never won a prize or the other way around, which is the most
common thing due to the fact that usually it is the minorities the ones that win the recognition and
the majority who express their feelings in bad ways.

Another thing to add is that with the change in the concept of excellence, it could cause a
recognition of other abilities in every student. In other words, the students will have the chance to
demonstrate their capacities to do something else, not only the base subjects as mathematics,
sciences, literature, etc. And this new recognition of other abilities can be seen when the student is
asked to do something they like and they are good at it and to show it. This way, the teacher can
mark according to the student's abilities while looking at all the context of the student.

In my humble opinion, it is necessary the change of the concept because as we have seen, there
are many problems for students who do not have the same capacities than others for certain
subjects. One problem of not recognize other capacities and abilities in students is when the
teacher is going to reward a child for the score he or she got in the last exam, he gives the prize to
only that student. But, what happens with the other students? What happens is that the other
students will not feel comfortable in the classroom or any other place, if they are with the “best
students”.