| It may be important to distinguish between two kinds of competition. There's competition for grades, honors, etc. I don't get any sense of that at Chicago at all from my kids -- it's absent from their lives. (Both of them care a little about what grades they get, but it's not something they talk about with others, or even with me unless I force them to.) Then there's trying to say something smarter than the person next to you in your Hum class. I get the sense that there's LOTS of that. You could go to a class and think, "Whoa! Shark tank!", but that's different from grade-grubbing, and not at all inconsistent with cooperating a lot on everything (including classwork) outside of class. |