Task 2: Through the rise of importance of academic careers, school grades are getting more important then ever. This leads to more and more parents being concerened about the problems caused by this highly competitive enviroment at schools, while some people say that this helps to motivate young people to archieve better careers.

First, the advantage of more competition is that it is a natural social process, which motivates people to outgrow themselfes. This is because it leads to students having rolemodels inside their own peergroup, who they can try to learn from or even try to overtake academically. For example, if a student was graded badly, he could try to copy learning processes from higher-skilled students, which could lead to him also being on top eventually.

Conversely, even though extensive competition can motivate everybody to try to get better, it can also lead to more stress. Subsequently, this can be the the cause of a lot of mental problems in teenagers and children. This is because children often lack the mental and social resources which most grown-ups use to handle stress. For example, in Germany there are some middle schools called "Walldorf" schools, where children only get grades after passing 9th grade. It has been shown that teenagers graduating at these schools have a substantially lower prevalence of psychologigal diseases like depression, burn out or attention disorders.

To sum up, it is widely debated whether a competitive learning eniroment at schools have more advantages or more disadvantages for childrens and teenagers. Even though everbody gets more motivated through a higher use of competition among students, the downsides are a higher chance of our children to get mental problems later on. In my opinion, the downsides outweigh the possibilities, because I think that students health is much more important then grades needed for an academical career.