The New Generation & Power

Over the years it has gotten more challenging to teach organizational power and politics to my Stanford students.  Acquiring power means getting ahead, and they now grow up in a world that seemingly eschews competition.  A student last year told me she had quit her swim team and instead played water polo because at swim meets, everyone got a ribbon no matter where they finished.

And now comes Winnie Hu's article in The New York Times noting that in high schools, the days of the valedictory speech, given by the top graduating student, seem to be coming to an end.  At Jericho High School on Long Island, there will be 7 valedictorians because, as the principal noted, "When did we start saying that we should limit honors so that only one person gets the glory?"  Of course, if everyone gets an award, the value of the honor goes down—something many of the high school administrators recognize.  But it is something schools are willing to do to reduce "pressure and competition among students."

The problem is that in the world after high school, or maybe after college with the inflated grades, competition is, for better or worse, a fact of life.  There is only one CEO, one managing partner in a law or consulting firm, one President, one school superintendent, one commanding general—you get the point.  It is not at all evident to me that we do our students any favors by shielding them from the psychological rigors and stresses of competition until they are playing for the highest possible stakes—their careers.

Last year I had students sort of thank me for helping them redevelop their competitive edge and hone their influence skills.  Some, who did their undergraduate degrees at Harvard, had once lived in a more competitive environment but were getting "soft" (their word, not mine) in the California sun.

We should teach our students to be decent, kind, generous people who care for others.  But we also have a responsibility to get them prepared for an ever more competitive world—the competition is now truly global.  Making everyone a "winner"—or almost everyone a valedictorian—may be temporarily good for their self-esteem, but it doesn't constitute much sound preparation for the world they are all going to face.