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In 1988, after twenty years of learning and playing the sport of tennis, and 14 years of teaching it, I had a simple realization:
The introduction of competition into the learning process, before students have achieved proficiency in any of the physical, mental, or emotional fundamental skills necessary for success, compromises and diminishes everyone’s short term enjoyment and long term development. And that this competitive learning model dominates education in the United States. |
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 Evolutionary Education challenges the very foundation of our society. It creates a clear vision for our survival and transcendence. To realize this vision, we need to move away from our current competitively based education system, which, for a majority of people, leads to self-doubt, fear, anger, sadness, overly aggressive behavior, performance anxiety, resignation, and limited benefits, toward a new paradigm based on a non-competitive model that generates innovation, inspiration, excellence, inner confidence, peace, love, and joy.
Some of you call yourselves highly competitive, and for some that may be true, but for others it means that you are highly motivated and have a strong desire to excel. This is different than being competitive. It's easy to confuse the desire for excellence with the trait of competitiveness, when in fact they are very different.
 The problem with a competitive system is not with competition per se, but the premature introduction of competition into the learning process, before fundamental physical, mental, and emotional skills have been developed. How can we expect children to succeed when they don't know the basics?
The Achilles' heel of a competitive paradigm is that each generation has to be more competitive than the last, not to achieve an absolute standard of excellence, but just to keep up. Each generation has to be more competitive! Where does it end? How much more competitive can we be? When does the stress of this unrealistic expectation begin producing more negative than positive results? And have we already reached that point?
We live in an unfinished universe whose further development, and now survival, depends on our ability and determination to evolve to a planet-wide higher level of consciousness. Our technological advances have made our world intimately interconnected. We now have unity in technology, but competition still dominates our consciousness. And this must change in order for us to be able to work together and fulfill our potential as a species.
Un article en Français sur l'Education Evolutive
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