Any and every society will have both.
On an intuitive level, competition is perhaps associated with excellence, while contribution is associated with healthy communities. Just as both are necessary in any society, so both are essential in education.
In a classroom setting, the concept of contribution fuels productive classroom discussions, and enables students to collaborate on larger and more complex assignments and projects.
Among educational administrators, and among those who hold professorships in “schools of education” at universities, there is, however, a tendency to ascribe little or no value to competition in an educational setting. In fact, they often ascribe harmful effects to competition.
The benefits of competition in education have been underestimated.
Many students find that they can achieve higher levels of motivation through competition. When a learning activity is framed as a game, the competitive instinct is awakened, and some students will devote more focus and energy to the task.
Competition also helps institutions deal with the reality of limited resources: not every undergraduate can enter a graduate program. Some manner of selection process is necessary. Competition is as good as any. Ironically, many admissions processes which hope to select students for matriculation on a non-competitive basis turn out to be simply competitions in disguise. In the most extreme of such cases, the admissions processes, in their efforts to be non-competitive, provide bizarre and perverse incentives as students compete in their efforts to present themselves as incapable of competition.
Finally, it should be noted that there is serious competition between the nations of the world in their abilities to educate their young people. The wellbeing of the nation can, and often does, depend on the younger generation’s good education.
It is both inevitable and desirable that education contain elements of competition: between students in a classroom; between students in a national standardized exam; between students applying for advanced post-secondary admission; and between nations.
It cannot be otherwise.
If a society, a school, or an educational system attempts to deny the inherent competition in the educational process, then such an attempt will be frustrated, because competition is inescapable, and such an attempt will hinder education, because competition is salutary. The attempt to eliminate competition from the classroom, the college, the university, the nation, and the world is futile and oftentimes damaging.
To be sure, it is possible to overemphasize competition. A contributive and collaborative aspect is also necessary. But in the current society, the danger of overemphasizing competition is not part of the general education system, although it can be found in some specialized niches of academia. Moderation in all things!
