No Contest (63 page)
Authors: Alfie Kohn
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Cooperative Learning
magazine, the successor to the newsletter of the International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education (IASCE), is published quarterly. For information, write to Box 1582, Santa Cruz, CA 95061.
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* Some educators are also realizing that CL is the logical alternative to the practice known as tracking, that is, separating children by putative ability.
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* Peer support, in fact, is an essential ingredient in the creation of effective schools. The higher self-esteem, more positive relationships, and enhanced performance that attend cooperation among students also attend cooperation among teachers. Conversely, “if teachers spend five to seven hours a day advocating a competitive, individualistic approach â telling students, âDo your own work. . . . Try to be better [than your neighbor],' those are the values the teachers are going to have in their relationships with colleagues and their administrators.”
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Complicating matters further is the fear of making oneself vulnerable by seeking help from a colleague about a problem in the classroom. But the administrator who wants to create a cooperative school must do more than exhort teachers to exchange ideas; carefully designed structures and adequate time must be provided for collaboration.
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* These epithets tend to be mutually exclusive. If both could be applied to the same person, I suppose someone might raise serious questions about the Pentagon's budget.
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* My complaint here is not that so few writers on the subject take the same position I do, but that so few apparently have even bothered to question the shibboleth that competition is troubling only when done to excess. This assumption is stated as an obvious truth: everyone knows children need to be set against one another
sometimes
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* Thus, for example, we might question the assumption that the United States was able to put a man on the moon as soon as it did by virtue of being in a race with the USSR. Rather than inspiring excellence, the fact of being in a contest meant that each country was struggling with problems that the other country had already solved. Competition in general is distinguished by just such redundancy; it is inherently wasteful, since each rival cannot benefit from what the other knows. (Of course, the space-race example overlooks the question of whether putting someone on the moon was worth the enormous expense in the first place. That, not coincidentally, is exactly the kind of question that people almost never ask when they are in a race.)
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â The absence of both genuine cooperation and autonomy is captured in a single corporate phrase: being a “team player." In context, this exhortation is very much like urging elementary school students to “cooperate.” The desired behavior has nothing to do with self-directed teamwork and everything to do with obedient conformity.
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* In chapter 4, I mentioned noncompetitive outdoor games collected by Terry Orlick and indoor games devised by a small Canadian company. I neglected, however, to include the address of the latter. Request a catalogue from Family Pastimes, R.R. 4, Perth, Ontario, Canada K7H 3C6. Also try Animal Town at P.O. Box 485, Healdsburg, California 95448 (800â445-8642). I have not been promised any free games in exchange for these endorsements, although I would not return any that happened to arrive.
