You say "fear feeds competition" but there's an opposing view by rhetoricians: Nothing ever gets better without at least the threat of competition. I don't often find myself defending competition, but there you go.
As to your empathic observation idea: go for it! One of my go-to heuristics is "symmetry of experience", that is, the more aligned the teacher and student are for example, the better the learning is. Symmetry happens often in communities and rarely in hyper-specialized institutions.
As to your empathic observation idea: go for it! One of my go-to heuristics is "symmetry of experience", that is, the more aligned the teacher and student are for example, the better the learning is. Symmetry happens often in communities and rarely in hyper-specialized institutions.