Can Education Overcome Human Nature?

Most societal problems stem from flaws in a society's value system.  Because a society values A, B is then neglected, leading to structural problem C, ethical problem D, and so on.  By and large, the human race's most destructive societal value is its fierce sense of competition, a value bred into us through years of evolutionary training.  'The most fit survive.'  That is how nature works after all.  How then, is this evolutionary maxim be destructive to our society?  The simple truth is that it pits us against one another in a global society that is increasingly demanding social and economic equality.  Some might call this a paradox of human nature: we demand compassion from one another while competing against each other.  It is impossible to reconcile the two, yet it seems equally impossible to abandon one or the other.  How then do we proceed?  If it were possible to choose between the two, certainly we would choose compassion over competition (unless of course you like driving people into the ground and kicking them in the face), but our society is structured overwhelmingly in favor of competition.  One merely has to look at the way we educate our students to see this.

Simply by awarding individual grades to mark students' progress, we have ensured that they will remain at odds with one another.  Teachers can only give grades if they compare a student to his or her peers, and a student knows this!  Therefore, Mike knows that if Susan doesn't do as well on her exam, he has a better chance of getting a good grade.  It would be disingenuous to deny this.  Any sort of standardized assessment grades on a curve, comparing one student's scores with another student's.  In our current system there is no better way to assess a student's progress, but our emphasis upon grades and test scores continues to compartmentalize students, discouraging collaboration in favor of competition. 

I'm not saying competition is bad; I'm saying that society's excessive value of it is.  Everyday we encourage people to climb the ladders of socio-economic success, but at what cost to our ethical code?  For as one person climbs another is left behind.  Some will say that's just the way the world works... well damn it, I don't know about you, but I'm sick of it!  I want a society where compassion and kindness reigns over everything we do, where curiosity gets the better of fear.  When I go to school, I don't want to be afraid of not getting an A, of not getting a job after I graduate.  I want a reason to learn that doesn't scare me to death!  Is that really too much to ask? 

(Your answer is no.)

Why?  Because we can see hope on the horizon.  As Tony Wagner wrote in his book, businesses and corporations are doing away with their hierarchical structures in favor of more creative team-based leadership approaches.  Employers are looking for employees who can connect and cooperate with other people, not just direct them.  Even if the end goal is to make their businesses more competitive, executives are still encouraging cooperation and creativity, attitudes that will only prove infectious to the larger goals of the company.  The information age is thrusting us into a global society were communication and collaboration will be essential to both economic and cultural success, ensuring a slow but steady restructuring of our value system.  To accommodate this, schools are beginning to employ collaborative approaches to teaching, encouraging kids to learn from one another and work together to achieve common goals.  Students will develop critical thinking skills that will enable them to connect individual details to a larger context.  Overall, these approaches will constitute a greater awareness of communities (schools, corporations, businesses, races, nations, humanity itself) and individuals' roles within them.  Not only this, students will be able to see the extent these communities function within and around each other.  If we continue to emphasis learning in community, one day the students we teach might work together to reduce our energy consumption, fix global warming, prevent genocide, and even eliminate world hunger.  Even if it seems impossible, even if human nature seems to dictate otherwise, it should be our goal as teachers to instill this idealism in every student we teach.  Education should not only prepare kids for the world; it should empower them to shape it.