I was reading Nancy Flanagan’s blog, Teacher in a Strange Land, for theTeacher Leaders Network.  Apparently, her hometown paper reprinted a recent article she wrote for her blog some time ago.  The letters mailed in reaction to her opinions about competition in education were interestingly explosive and quite “anti-Nancy.”  I commented on her article as follows:

This article is dead on.  I also think that some of this attitude is well intentioned but very outdated.  I say this because I recognize it in some of those I love.  It kinda relates to the debate about monetization.  “Why do you post your curriculum on your website?” asks my father.  He spends time over Friday dinner fretting that I’m not competitive enough as if, because I collaborate or teach teachers, I am, somehow, not business savvy enough…

But times they are a’changin’.  We live in a collaborative world of Open Source and Web 2.0.  It’s not that competition isn’t valuable.  It’s just not the driving force in our craft, and that includes how we run our profession and our schools.

I believe in differentiation all around.  Some institutions do need competition, perhaps even some schools do. But to make a sweeping rule pitting one group’s limited resources against another’s plentiful ones, is not the way to solve education’s problems.  Perhaps some students do reflect their parent’s mentality and do need competition in order to thrive.  But these students cannot drive an entire society of educational philosophy.