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The Case Against Competition

rahizan — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:16:17 +0800

WORKING MOTHER

September 1987

The Case Against Competition

By Alfie Kohn

When it comes to competition, we Americans typically recognize only two legitimate positions: enthusiastic support and qualified support.

The first view holds that the more we immerse our children (and ourselves) in rivalry, the better. Competition builds character and produces excellence. The second stance admits that our society has gotten carried away with the need to be Number One, that we push our kids too hard and too fast to become winners -- but insists that competition can be healthy and fun if we keep it in perspective.

I used to be in the second camp. But after investigating the topic for several years, looking at research from psychology, sociology, biology, education, and other fields, I'm now convinced that neither position is correct. Competition is bad news all right, but it's not just that we overdo it or misapply it. The trouble lies with competition itself. The best amount of competition for our children is none at all, and the very phrase "healthy competition" is actually a contradiction in terms.

That may sound extreme if not downright un-American. But some things aren't just bad because they're done to excess; some things are inherently destructive. Competition, which simply means that one person can succeed only if others fail, is one of those things. It's always unnecessary and inappropriate at school, at play, and at home.

Think for a moment about the goals you have for your children. Chances are you want them to develop healthy self-esteem, to accept themselves as basically good people. You want them to become successful, to achieve the excellence of which they're capable. You want them to have loving and supportive relationships. And you want them to enjoy themselves.

These are fine goals. But competition not only isn't necessary for reaching them -- it actually undermines them.

Competition is to self-esteem as sugar is to teeth. Most people lose in most competitive encounters, and it's obvious why that causes self-doubt. But even winning doesn't build character; it just lets a child gloat temporarily. Studies have shown that feelings of self-worth become dependent on external sources of evaluation as a result of competition: Your value is defined by what you've done. Worse -- you're a good person in proportion to the number of people you've beaten.

In a competitive culture, a child is told that it isn't enough to be good -- he must triumph over others. Success comes to be defined as victory, even though these are really two very different things. Even when the child manages to win, the whole affair, psychologically speaking, becomes a vicious circle: The more he competes, the more he needs to compete to feel good about himself.

When I made this point on a talk show on national television, my objections were waved aside by the parents of a seven-year-old tennis champion named Kyle, who appeared on the program with me. Kyle had been used to winning ever since a tennis racket was put in his hands at the age of two. But at the very end of the show, someone in the audience asked him how he felt when he lost. Kyle lowered his head and in a small voice replied, "Ashamed."

This is not to say that children shouldn't learn discipline and tenacity, that they shouldn't be encouraged to succeed or even have a nodding acquaintance with failure. But none of these requires winning and losing -- that is, having to beat other children and worry about being beaten. When classrooms and playing fields are based on cooperation rather than competition, children feel better about themselves. They work with others instead of against them, and their self-esteem doesn't depend on winning a spelling bee or a Little League game.

Children succeed in spite of competition, not because of it. Most of us were raised to believe that we do our best work when we're in a race -- that without competition we would all become fat, lazy, and mediocre. It's a belief that our society takes on faith. It's also false.

There is good evidence that productivity in the workplace suffers as a result of competition. The research is even more compelling in classroom settings. David Johnson, a professor of social psychology at the University of Minnesota, and his colleagues reviewed all the studies they could find on the subject from 1924 to 1980. Sixty-five of the studies found that children learn better when they work cooperatively as opposed to competitively, eight found the reverse, and 36 found no significant difference. The more complex the learning task, the worse children in a competitive environment fared.

Brandeis University psychologist Teresa Amabile was more interested in creativity. In a study, she asked children to make "silly collages." Some competed for prizes and some didn't. Seven artists then independently rated the kids' work. It turned out that those who were trying to win produced collages that were much less creative -- less spontaneous, complex and varied -- than the others.

One after another, researchers across the country have concluded that children do not learn better when education is transformed into a competitive struggle. Why? First, competition often makes kids anxious and that interferes with concentration. Second, competition doesn't permit them to share their talents and resources as cooperation does, so they can't learn from one another. Finally, trying to be Number One distracts them from what they're supposed to be learning. It may seem paradoxical, but when a student concentrates on the reward (an A or a gold star or a trophy), she becomes less interested in what she's doing. The result: Performance declines.

Just because forcing children to try to outdo one another is counterproductive doesn't mean they can't keep track of how they're doing. There's no problem with comparing their achievements to an objective standard (how fast they ran, how many questions they got right) or to how they did yesterday or last year. But if we value our children's intellectual development, we need to realize that turning learning into a race simply doesn't work.

Competition is a recipe for hostility. By definition, not everyone can win a contest. If one child wins, another cannot. This means that each child comes to regard others as obstacles to his or her own success. Forget fractions or home runs; this is the real lesson our children learn in a competitive environment.

Competition leads children to envy winners, to dismiss losers (there's no nastier epithet in our language than "Loser!"), and to be suspicious of just about everyone. Competition makes it difficult to regard others as potential friends or collaborators; even if you're not my rival today, you could be tomorrow.

This is not to say that competitors will always detest each other. But trying to outdo someone is not conducive to trust -- indeed, it would be irrational to trust someone who gains from your failure. At best, competition leads one to look at others through narrowed eyes; at worst, it invites outright aggression. Existing relationships are strained to the breaking point, while new friendships are often nipped in the bud.

Again, the research -- which I review in my book No Contest: The Case Against Competition -- helps to explain the destructive effect of win/lose arrangements. When children compete, they are less able to take the perspective of others -- that is, to see the world from someone else's point of view. One study demonstrated conclusively that competitive children were less empathetic than others; another study showed that competitive children were less generous.

Cooperation, on the other hand, is marvelously successful at helping children to communicate effectively, to trust in others and to accept those who are different from themselves. Competition interferes with these goals and often results in outright antisocial behavior. The choice is ours: We can blame the individual children who cheat, turn violent, or withdraw, or we can face the fact that competition itself is responsible for such ugliness.

Studies also show, incidentally, that competition among groups isn't any better than competition among individuals. Kids don't have to work against a common enemy in order to know the joys of camaraderie or to experience success. Real cooperation doesn't require triumphing over another group.

Having fun doesn't mean turning playing fields into battlefields. It's remarkable, when you stop to think about it, that the way we teach our kids to have a good time is to play highly structured games in which one individual or team must defeat another.

Consider one of the first games our children learn to play: musical chairs. Take away one chair and one child in each round until one smug winner is seated and everyone else has been excluded from play. You know that sour birthday party scene; the needle is lifted from the record and someone else is transformed into a loser, forced to sit out the rest of the game with the other unhappy kids on the side. That's how children learn to have fun in America.

Terry Orlick, a Canadian expert on games, suggests changing the goal of musical chairs so children are asked to fit on a diminishing number of seats. At the end, seven or eight giggling, happy kids are trying to squish on a single chair. Everyone has fun and there are no winners or losers.

What's true of musical chairs is true of all recreation; with a little ingenuity, we can devise games in which the obstacle is something intrinsic to the task itself rather than another person or team.

In fact, not one of the benefits attributed to sports or other competitive games actually requires competition. Children can get plenty of exercise without struggling against each other. Teamwork? Cooperative games allow everyone to work together, without creating enemies. Improving skills and setting challenges? Again, an objective standard or one's own earlier performance will do.

When Orlick taught a group of children noncompetitive games, two thirds of the boys and all of the girls preferred them to games that require opponents. If our culture's idea of a good time is competition, it may just be because we haven't tried the alternative.

How can parents raise a noncompetitive child in a competitive world? Competition is destructive to children's self-esteem, it interferes with learning, sabotages relationships, and isn't necessary to have a good time. But how do you raise a child in a culture that hasn't yet caught on to all this?

There are no easy answers here. But there is one clearly unsatisfactory answer: Make your son or daughter competitive in order to fit into the "real world." That isn't desirable for the child -- for all the reasons given here -- and it perpetuates the poison of competition in another generation.

Children can be taught about competition, prepared for the destructive forces they'll encounter, without being groomed to take part in it uncritically. They can be exposed to the case against competition just as they are taught the harms of drug abuse or reckless driving.

You will have to decide how much compromise is appropriate so your child isn't left out or ridiculed in a competitive society. But at least you can make your decision based on knowledge about competition's destructiveness. You can work with other parents and with your child's teachers and coaches to help change the structures that set children against one another. Or you may want to look into cooperative schools and summer camps, which are beginning to catch on around the country.

As for reducing rivalry and competitive attitudes in the home:

Avoid comparing a child's performance to that of a sibling, a classmate, or yourself as a child.

Don't use contests ("Who can dry the dishes fastest?") around the house. Watch your use of language ("Who's the best little girl in the whole wide world?") that reinforces competitive attitudes.

Never make your love or acceptance conditional on a child's performance. It's not enough to say, "As long as you did your best, honey" if the child learns that Mommy's attitude about her is quite different when she has triumphed over her peers.

Be aware of your power as a model. If you need to beat others, your child will learn that from you regardless of what you say. The lesson will be even stronger if you use your child to provide you with vicarious victories.

Raising healthy, happy, productive children goes hand in hand with creating a better society. The first step to achieving both is recognizing that our belief in the value of competition is built on myths. There are better ways for our children -- and for us -- to work and play and live.

http://www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/tcac.htm

need advice on teeth

rahizan — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 09:10:49 +0800

hello forumers,

i need some advice from you all.. lets say, need to straighten the teeth, is there any option other than using braces? the main factor is the cost, what about just remove all the teeth that is crooked? is there any dangerous to health/body/face? lol

The Case of COMPETITION?

rahizan — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 13:37:20 +0800

Alfie Kohn writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. The author of twelve books and scores of articles, he lectures at education conferences and universities as well as to parent groups and corporations.

Kohn's criticisms of competition and rewards have been widely discussed and debated, and he has been described in Time magazine as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores."

[youtube]S4si1HaDmLg[/youtube]

is this very difficult question?

rahizan — Mon, 30 May 2011 09:04:09 +0800

Not having to offer a service to trade for food, housing, etc., would there be scarcity of services/innovation? What does a mind need to be curious/get inspired? and how do we redesign the university to integrate it with the community i.e. infrastructure, labs etc? So everyone inspired has access to tools

Has Money corrupted Love?

rahizan — Fri, 27 May 2011 12:26:57 +0800

Has Money corrupted Love?

Does anyone think that people would be able to love more genuinely if money wasn't such an issue in our lives?

From listening to people who are serious about finding a mate it seems that a person's ability to bring in money is the first thing they are curious about before showing or not showing interest in that person. Which means we are basing our reasons for falling or not falling in love with someone on income. Which in turn means, Love, true Love is corrupted.

Even for people who don't initially do this at the start of a relationship, money eventually becomes a reason for why the relationship can or can't work because society is so structured around money that it is the primary factor in upward mobility.

For example, in the movie "The Pursuit of Happiness", which was based on a true story, the main character lost his wife, his love, entirely because of lack of money.

And if you look out into the world, there must be more men without money alone than those with it.

Can we really be with the person we love if money is such a strong factor in determining if we are initially attracted to someone and if we stay with them?

Professional revolutionaries

rahizan — Fri, 27 May 2011 10:26:11 +0800

The concept of professional revolutionaries, alternatively called cadre, is in origin a Leninist concept used to describe a body of devoted communists who spend the majority of their free time organizing their party toward a mass revolutionary party capable of leading a workers' revolution. The size of this core is naturally proportional to the size of the party itself.

Most Marxists agree that a cadre is necessary in one form or another; Trotsky in particular did not believe that these professional revolutionaries, or vanguardism in general, was to blame for what they considered the eventual totalitarian (what they term Stalinist) nature of the Soviet Union, nor the situations in China, Cuba and other Communist states; instead they cite as the true causes the isolation of the Russian Revolution in the case of Russia, and the practices of Maoists and other so-called Marxist-Leninist parties.

Other communists, particularly those sometimes dubbed "post-Maoists", do indeed disagree with the professional revolutionaries concept and view it as antithetical to the "mass party" ideal (party physically composed of the masses of people, rather than an elite intellectual core) advocated especially strongly by Mao, although never realized under his leadership in China. Such communists therefore today advocate for a current version of a "mass party" of working class people, thereby in their view maximizing direct participation in the revolution and the subsequent revolutionary government.

In Lenin's original work the purpose of the cadre is to educate the masses and essentially bring the entire population to the level of "professional revolutionaries", but it was not a requirement that the whole population, or even a majority, be at or near such level before seizing power in a communist revolution. At its highest point of membership, in the 1980s, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union contained only 18 million out of a total area population of 280 million, and it is unknown how small fraction of those 18 million could have been regarded "professional revolutionaries".

reference : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_revolutionaries

crime or?

rahizan — Wed, 25 May 2011 16:26:27 +0800

what do you think if you need to rob or steal from supermarket so that you have money to visit doctor? serious talk

Sama-Sama Majulah untuk Negara

rahizan — Tue, 24 May 2011 11:21:30 +0800

sama-sama majulah untuk negara

- RON95 naik 20 sen bulan depan http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1890237
- 50% of Govt Servants are POOR (20k of 40k staff) http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1889984
- so who, you? http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopic=1784968
- Kroni Mari http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopic=1850083
- 83% Malaysians = Struggling, thriving vs struggling vs suffering http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1867390

so what happened?

rahizan — Thu, 19 May 2011 15:57:01 +0800

from this thread, what happened to TS?

http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1882344

"son of Soil"

rahizan — Tue, 17 May 2011 17:48:23 +0800

son of soil

anak tanah siapa?

You Never Really Own Anything

Ownership. Property. This is mine. This is yours. Do you think you own anything? You don’t. Ownership is an illusion. So is property. Why? Because all the things you use are only used by you temporarily before they are passed on or thrown away. Be it food, clothing, cars, property, furniture, cell phones, air, water. You never say to anyone ‘Don’t breath here! This air is mine!’. Of course not. Air is still free. Water is also in a large degree free, but is becoming more and more privatized. Food, clothing, cars and land has become utterly privatized. Still. You don’t, and never will own anything of it.

You use it.

You don’t own it.

At best, all you can say about something you think you own is that ‘this is in my possession now and as long as I am using it’. That is the most ‘ownership’ there is. Everything that you ‘own’ is only ‘yours’ temporarily. It is only borrowed or rented. Your food goes into you and comes out again. So does the water. Even your body is on loan. When you die it goes back into the circulation. Ownership is an illusion. Still, it’s an illusion bought by humanity. But it is no more than an agreement that say’s that ‘ok, we will have a system here that gives some the right to claim vast resources of the planet for themselves, while others suffer’.

There’s no ownership in nature. There’s only coexistence, with every part fulfilling their task, and every part being fulfilled in doing so. In a moneyless society and resource based economy this is how we will look at ownership, since this is the only ‘ownership’ there is and ever will be. Having a paper that say’s you own something doesn’t make it more ‘yours’ in the big scheme of things. Whatever you ‘own’ can be lost in the blink of an eye.

Today ownership is almost equal to accessibility. The more you own, the more access you have to things in life. The more land you own, the more cars you own, the more houses you own, etc. The problem is that you are only one person and cannot possibly make 100% use of all the things you own. Even if you only own one car and a guitar. You will never be able to use whatever you own all the time.

If, however, you didn’t own anything, but had access to virtually everything this planet and humanity can offer, you would ‘own’ more than the richest people on this planet will ever own. I’ll say this again, because this is the most important thing there is to grasp when it comes to concept of non-ownership:

If you didn’t own anything, but had access to virtually everything this planet, and humanity, can offer, you would own more than the richest people on this planet will ever own. The whole planet would be yours to use. Of course, this means that all borders and visas would have to go too.

In a resource based economy everyone will have access to virtually everything on this planet. Today we think that if this was the case, everyone would rush to the same places and go for the same things, because that is what is seemingly happening today. ‘Everyone’ seem to run after the same things. And sometimes, yes, some things are more popular than others. But we must remember that a lot of this is due to advertising and promotion seeking a certain behavior among the population fulfilling the profit motive of the capitalistic system.

One example of a moneyless system in today’s society is the library. Sometimes you have to wait for books to come back, yes, but more than often the books you want to borrow are there for you. If the whole world was like the library, you might have to wait a while going to a certain beach or holiday resort if it was full for the time being. But, there would be lot’s and lot’s of other places to visit in the mean time, just like there would be lot’s of other interesting books to read while you were waiting for the one you wanted. Maybe you’d find other, even more interesting books to read, and places to visit, in the mean time.

The idea of ownership builds on the notion of scarcity. The thought that there is not enough of places and books for every one of us. Therefore, it is best to hoard as much as we can while we can. If we don’t, we risk being without, not having access and having to live a poor life.

Not owning anything could be the best experience humanity has ever had. It would result in the most abundant lifestyle anyone on this planet could ever dream of. Not owning anything is a notion built on the opposite of scarcity. It is a thought that when we share, everyone will have many times more than what we would ever have if we were to own everything we wanted. This includes the richest of the richest people on this planet. No one, I repeat, n o o n e, can own the whole planet. Even though someone certainly tries to do just that, it will never happen. In any case no one would ever be able to use the whole planet for themselves only. You can’t swim on all the seas, climb all the mountains or eat all the food.

Some people try to own as much as possible, thinking this will bring the best lifestyle for them, not realizing that sharing will bring more to everyone, even them. Of course, we can not all have our own private jet or private beach. But we would have access to more jet’s and beaches than we could ever use in a world with no ownership.

So, since we don’t own anything anyway, since ownership is nothing more than an illusion bringing lack to the world, why not simply abandon it. Of course, this is not something that is done over night. Many people are ready for it, even rich people. But just as many people are afraid of it and far from ready. For it to happen this thought has to manifest itself throughout the population and take root. Humanity have to break free from the thought of money, property and ownership and open it’s eyes to the new virtually unlimited possibilities a moneyless society and a resource based economy can offer.

crossover cable

rahizan — Sun, 08 May 2011 12:21:38 +0800

Connect pc to pc without switch hub

Configuring LAPTOP:

1. Go to Control Panel -> Network connections

2. Right-click on Wireless network connection and select Properties

3. Select Advanced tab and put a thick in the box "Allow other network users to connect to this computer's Internet connection"
(You can also put a thick in the other box if you wish)

4. Confirm with the OK button and find yourself back in the Network connections window

5. Next, in Network connections Right-click on your LAN adapter, under General tab select Internet protocol (TCP/IP) and click Properties

6. Assign IP manually (192.168.0.1 - this is also the default if you use Network connection Wizard) and Subnet mask (255.255.255.0 - also default)

7. Next you must assing (one or) both DNS servers (I used the one ISP provided) - the most important thing to do is to use the same DNS when you configure the other computer!!!

8. Confirm everything and this computer is done...

Configuring PC (if you don't want to set-up Remote desktop, where PC is the host computer, start at 4.):

1. Go to Control Panel -> System -> Remote tab

2. Put a thick in the "Allow users to connect remotely to this computer"

3. Confirm with OK

4. Go to Control Panel -> Network connections

5. Right-click on your LAN adapter, under General tab select Internet protocol (TCP/IP) and click Properties

6. Assign IP manually (for example 192.168.0.2 - has to be in the same range as the IP on the other computer, but different!) and Subnet mask (the same as on the other computer - 255.255.255.0)

7. Assign Default Gateway (which is the assigned IP of the other computer, in this case 192.168.0.1)

8. Assign the same DNS as on the first computer

9. Confirm everything...

Everything should work now. Remember you have to use CROSS-OVER CABLE

minyak manyak

rahizan — Thu, 05 May 2011 09:55:52 +0800

so ron97 has naik 20 cent, if our future is by getting harder to purchase goods and high living cost, how come the gomen and politician keep telling us we are heading to developed country, is that mean developed country means you cannot have more goods / more purchasing power as before?

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

house getting too expensive v2

rahizan — Wed, 04 May 2011 11:22:02 +0800

so we see because house is getting too expensive that means economy say people should not buy, and not need buy equivalent of theres no demand and no supply.

conclusion : people not interested to buy house from the economy point of view

bukan gambar amoi

rahizan — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:33:01 +0800

the question here is how come they are good friend?

[addedon]April 28, 2011, 4:35 pm[/addedon]BN and PKR is not fighting?

tricube

rahizan — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:09:40 +0800

anyone ever ask if using encryption on 1malaysia email, is that mean corruption is easier and allowed? MACC cant do anything also because encrypted email = no proof

HAHAHA

The Hypothetical Genetics of Sexual Orientation

rahizan — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 15:34:32 +0800

http://hamp.hampshire.edu/%7EkebF92/genetics.html

link is dead, but i think this is the article

Science : Criminal Genes

rahizan — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 15:15:21 +0800

www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/2002/11/criminal_genes

link is dead, but i managed to find the article

Nurture, Not Nature: Study Says Environment

rahizan — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:58:11 +0800

http://facstaff.uww.edu/mohanp/twinhumor.html

A Brief Survey of Operant Behavior

rahizan — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:53:41 +0800

http://bfskinner.org/BFSkinner/SurveyOperantBehavior.html

Whatever Happened to Little Albert

rahizan — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:47:34 +0800

http://www.cmer.org/class/articles/albert.html

link is dead, but i managed to find the article