We talk about a safe environment for children in our classrooms. By safe, we mean emotionally safe as well as physically safe: safe from bullying, safe from assaults on their ego, safe from gratuitous put-downs, safe from insults to their family and background, etc.
OTOH, we insist on competition in the classroom, pitting one child against another, grading them on a scale from good to bad performance, comparing children, measuring how close or how far they come to meeting a standard set by some committe far away. I always think of that utterly stupid Zig Zigler slogan, “See you at the top!” Moron. The top, by definition in a competitive society, holds only a small number. In a non-competititive society, the top could conceivably be a plateau, a mesa, on which lots of people could fit. But the images projected by the supersalemen and hype-merchants clearly depict a pyramid. Maybe that’s why they call them pyramid schemes.
Teachers who want to make all their children successful are praised for their humanity and then fired for not making their class, their school, their district and their state reach the top.