One may argue that competition motivates students and makes them hardworking. This is not completely true. Students engage in scholastic competitions only in areas they are sure they have a high chance of winning. Once there is a feeling of ineptitude, such venture is usually relinquished. Students engage in competitions, in more case than not, for the rewards, prizes and special recognitions involved. Unfortunately, these accolades are the bane of the nuisance of competition with regards to motivation and spurring diligence. This is so because rewards for excellence are given on that particular area of excellence only and the relevance to education appended to it is a mere theoretical concept. According to Broome E.C said "The only proper way to approach this subject is, I believe, from the angle of its educational value". He continued, saying this method of evaluating diligence and motivation rather undermines its purpose and gives no value to the hard work in the educational perspective, (Broome, 1930). Most teachers, lecturers and instructors use methods such as overemphasizing on the work of a student who has done well in a test, writing on students' papers to see another student who did better than they for explanation or even comparing students, especially in the classroom setting all in the naive hope of arousing others to work hard. This method might work for a few, but there is not enough proof that it works for all and one cannot use a part to judge a whole. This is prejudice and too biased to draw a conclusion from.
A study to investigate the effect of competition in a Chinese classroom by the University of Hong Kong yielded startling results. The test was conducted with two groups of students in mind; one after a heavily competitive session and the other who did not participate in the competition but where equally taught the same thing with the other group of students.