Some people believe that competition for high grades motivates students to excel in the classroom Others believe that such competition seriously limits the quality of real learning Write a response in which you discuss which view more closely aligns with

Humans, as a product of natural selection, are an innately competitive species. The common view is that the presence of competition motivates people to improve. This concept has been applied to everything ranging from economics to education. However, the view that competition for high grades hinders real learning for students rather than helping them excel.
The argument that competition for high grades motivates students to excel stems from the fact that people always want to outdo one another. It is human nature to be competitive and it has enabled our species to survive. In many East Asian countries, families place heavy emphasis on education placing tremendous pressure on their children to perform well in school which can lead to gainful employment. In places like China, exam scores are often broadcast in front of the whole class so being a top-performer can bring one approbation, while being toward to bottom of the class can be a cause of embarrassment. As a result of these cultural and institutional factors promoting competition, students in East Asian countries such as China and South Korea have consistently performed better that their peers in various subjects such as mathematics and physics, and are regarded as having the most robust education systems in the world.
Under the surface, however, competition for high grades may actually erode the quality of real learning. Instead of actually trying to understand the concept of the material, students may be incentivized the study to the test. In other words, competition for high grades makes it easy for students to game the system by studying the idiosyncrasies of their exams themselves rather than focus on learning the actual material. For example, if a math teacher tells his students that the exam that he will be giving next week will mostly focus on addition with a little attention to multiplication, students may be incentivized to heavily study addition and treat multiplication with relative neglect. The result is, while the students optimized their time and their exam scores, they will not have obtained a comprehensive education in the subject of basic arithmetic. In other words, high competition for exemplary test scores can lead to the wrong incentives for students to learn.
Further, competition for high grades can also result in higher instances of academic dishonesty. While academic integrity is a mainstay in the policies of most educational institutions, studies have shown that immense pressure to surpass their peers in academia can lead to a higher probability of students violating academic integrity. In fact, this phenomenon not only occurs in education, but also in areas like sports, such as when Lance Armstrong revealed he took performance-enhancing drugs in order to win the Tour du France. Not only does academic dishonesty trample on the efforts of other students who tried their hardest to honestly obtain their grades, it also hurts the students who engage in such behavior since, while they do get their brief moment of glory, at the end of the day, they lose out by not having received any real knowledge. In such instances, competition for high grades just results in the grades themselves just being a façade that masks personal failure.
In conclusion, competition for high grades, while can incentivize good performance, severely hinders real learning because it places emphasis on the wrong aspect of education.