这个题目可能不太合时宜，然而我觉得在教育中一味提倡竞争确有不妥之处。前些日看到一篇报道：上海杨浦高级中学前校长、人民教育家于漪说：“我们老是强调学生竞争，错了！首先是合作。”这句话对我产生很大触动，因为我在前些年给我校教育学专业在上专业英语课时，美国著名教育家杜威先生的一段话给我留下很深的印象：
The mere absorbing of facts and truths is so exclusively individual an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of merel earning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat. Indeed, almost theonly measure for success is a competitive one, in the bad sense of that term----a comparison of results in the recitation or in the examination to see which child has succeeded in getting ahead of others in storing up, in accumulating, the maximum of information. So thoroughly is this prevailing atmosphere that for one child to help another in his task has become a school crime. Where the school work consists in simply learning lessons, mutual assistance, instead of being the most natural form of co-operation and association, becomes a clandestine effort to relieve one’s neighbor of his proper duties.
这段话译成汉语就是：
单纯的吸收事实和真理，完全是个人的事情，很自然地流于自私自利。缺乏鲜明的社会动机而只求单纯的学习收获，即使有了成绩，也不能明显地有益于社会。的确，竞赛（就这个名词的坏的意义而言）几乎成为衡量成绩的惟一手段，即比较背诵和考试的结果，去识别哪个儿童在强记和积储大量的知识方面所取得的成绩，是否优于其他儿童。这种流行的风气是如此普遍，以致一个儿童对其他儿童的学习有了帮助就算是犯罪。哪些地方学校的作业只在于学习课文，互相帮助就不是一种合作的和联合的自然形式，而变成了解除邻近同学固有的义务的一种秘密行为。
于漪和杜威都认为，在教育中一味强调“竞争”会带来危害。
