Kids are resilient. If it doesn't kill them, it can make them stronger. That doesn't mean that I believe it's OK to torture them in order to make them stronger. The ends don't justify the means.
It frankly ISN'T the competitiveness that troubles me. Not in the slightest. It's dropping the kids into a school where they can't understand ANYTHING, nor can they be understood, that strikes me as cruel and unusual. It's one thing to do that to someone who WANTS it. Kids have very little control over their lives, though, and forcing that on a kid (except when there is really no choice) is just wrong.
Especially since the PREMISE is wrong: Kids simply don't learn foreign languages faster and easier than adults. They learn them at a deeper level (different brain structures), so that they can eventually learn to speak a language as a native, but it takes as long or longer than an adult learning the same language for them to become proficient.
Not that I didn't expect it, since so many HN readers seem to disagree.
"Life at New Humanitarian was full of academic Olympiads, poetry-reciting contests and quiz bowls. The school stressed oral exams, even in math, where children had to solve an equation at the blackboard and explain methodology. Children were graded and ranked, with results posted. We were not accustomed to this: in Brooklyn, the school instilled an everyone’s-a-winner ethos. At New Humanitarian, Danya says, “they send an entirely different message to the kids: ‘Learning is hard, but you have to do it. You have to get good grades.’ ”