ABSTRACT
Competition in Education Of the dominant ideals of the nineteenth century, some have survived into our age, and some have not. Those that have survived have, for the most part, a more restricted field of application in our day than they had a hundred years ago. And of these the ideal of competition is a good example. It is, I think, a mistake to regard the belief in competition as due to Darwinism. The opposite is really the case: it was Darwinism that was due to belief in competition. The modern biologist, while he still believes in evolution, has much less belief in competition as its motive force than Darwin had; and this change reflects the change which has come over the economic structure of society. Industrialism began with large numbers of small firms all competing against each other, and at first with very little help from the State, which was still agricultural and aristocratic. Early industrialists, therefore, believed in self-help, laisser faire, and competition. From industry, the idea of competition spread to other spheres. Darwin persuaded men that competition between different forms of life was the cause of evolutionary progress. Educationists became persuaded that competition in the class-room was the best way to promote industry among the scholars. Belief in free competition was used by employers as an argument against tradeunionism, and is still so used in the backward parts of America. But competition between capitalists gradually diminished. The tendency has been for the whole of one industry to combine nationally, so that competition has become mainly between nations, and much less than formerly between different firms within a given nation. Meantime, it has naturally been the endeavour of capitalists, while combining themselves, to hinder combinations as much as they could where their employees were concerned. Their motto has been: 'United we stand; divided they fall.' Free competition has thus been preserved as a Great Ideal in all provinces of human life, except in the activities of industrial magnates. Where the industrial magnates are concerned,
the competition is national, and therefore takes the form of encouraging patriotism.
