‘Don’t forget to fill in the World Cup group before the match?’, my son texts. “Otherwise you end up at the bottom again.” I hardly dare say it, but the World Cup virus is also circulating at home. It’s a predictable ritual. First a reminder app from my son. After that, the front room fills with men (and the odd woman) in orange T-shirts who provide the match with expert commentary. Decibels full of one-liners about ‘idiotic’ referee decisions, ‘incomprehensible’ substitutions and ‘genuine’ crosses. Then, inevitably, follows the sadness or the joy of everyone’s new position in the rankings.
Whether you are a player or a spectator, sport remains a favorite pastime for many. You either win or you lose. It is precisely this zero sum gamecharacter – as sports professor Nico van Yperen calls it – that makes sports competitions so attractive. According to Van Yperen, ‘only 10 to 15 percent of the population is motivated by wanting to be better than others’. Yet, thanks to the neoliberal myth that competition leads to better performance, which has been preached for decades, rivalry and competitiveness are in the capillaries of our society.
Unfortunately also in our education. The result is an unnecessarily fragmented, emaciated education system, in which institutions compete with each other instead of cooperating. So it may just happen that a school with a surplus of teachers in an affluent neighborhood doesn’t even think about lending those teachers to a school five minutes away, in a poor neighborhood with a screaming shortage. Or that there are now 384 competing training routes to teaching. Meanwhile, teacher shortages are spiraling out of control, the quality of education has been declining for years and inequality of opportunity is increasing.
Our children also compete with each other for that coveted podium spot in the hall of fame of top scorers. As soon as you enter primary school as a 4-year-old, the intense competition begins. We compare the performance of children via standardized tests with only multiple choice questions in a very limited number of subject areas, mostly from the commercial test maker Cito. Not to what extent you master the subject matter, but how you score compared to the ‘norm group’ of peers. Once in group 8, another selection test follows the same pattern, which is your ticket to further education. Nowhere in the world does selection take place at such a young age. No wonder Eva in my 7th grade regularly has nightmares. “I’m so scared I’ll make a mistake on the math test,” the girl whispered when I asked her about the cause of her nightmares. “And then I can never be a marine biologist.”
Diplomas matter in our individualistic performance society. The fact that wealthy parents en masse send their children to tutoring in order to increase the test scores of their offspring is undesirable, but can be easily explained. Especially now that the teacher shortage is so great. Just like the large group of young people who suffer from mental problems due to the pressure to perform at school. Education has become a tough rat race.
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives discussed the education budget. After years of poaching and drooling, the cabinet is finally pulling out its wallet. No less than 53 billion euros, 10 percent more than in previous years, for an entire package. I doubt whether the major problems in education will soon be a thing of the past with all that money. However staggeringly high the amount is, and however welcome the actions of this government are, the root cause of all problems remains untouched: a decentralized education system based on competition. As long as politicians and education administrators do not dare to challenge this, Dutch education will remain a sporting competition, one zero sum game of winners and losers.