| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Health & Recovery" |
| Date: |
30 Jan 2006 05:01:00 AM |
| Object: |
How Cooperation helps us all |
How Cooperation helps us all
No Contest is a must-read book for anyone wishing to create, build and
invent. It shows how cooperation allows us to excel.
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/nc.htm
Ordering No Contest
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0395631254/wwwalfiekohorg/002-2359358-6852022
"Superbly researched, lucidly written, and delineated with admirable
clarity."
- Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Alfie Kohn marshals the evidence that competition is not the mainspring
of achievement in industry, the arts, education, or games."
- Dr. Benjamin Spock, pediatrician
"Well researched and sound, No Contest exposes erroneous assumptions
about the inevitability and value of competition. This book deserves our
attention."
- Carl Rogers, psychologist
Sample excerpts from No Contest;
pg. 149;
"... so that each of us knows what it is to work with others to paint a
room, prepare a report, cook a meal. To remember such experiences is to
know that cooperation encourages us to view our collaborators favorably;
it is to understand how cooperation teaches us, more broadly, the value
of relationship. Cooperation means the success of each participant is
linked to that of every other.
As of 1985, the Johnsons themselves had conducted thirty-seven studies
of interpersonal attraction under different learning arrangements.
Thirty-five of them clearly showed that cooperation promoted greater
attraction, while the results were mixed in the other two.61
pg. 45;
"Put plainly, one can set and reach goals - or prove to one's own and
others' satisfaction that one is competent - without ever competing.
'Success in achieving a goal does not depend upon winning over others
just as failing to achieve a goal does not mean losing to others.' A
moment's reflection reveals this as an undeniable truth. I can succeed
in knitting a scarf or writing a book without ever trying to make it
better than yours. Better yet, I can work with you - say, to prepare a
dinner or build a house. Many people take the absence of competition to
mean that one must be wandering aimlessly, without any goals. But
competing simply means that one is working toward a goal in such a way
as to prevent others from reaching their goals. This is one approach to
getting something done, but (happily) not the only one. Competition need
never enter the picture in order for skills to be mastered and
displayed, goals set and met."
pg. 55;
"The simplest way to understand why competition generally does not
promote excellence is to realize that trying to do well and trying to
beat others are two different things. Here sits a child in class, waving
his arm wildly to attract the teacher's attention, crying, "Oooh! Oooh!
Pick me!" The child is finally recognized but then seems befuddled. "Um,
what was that question again?" he finally asks. His mind is on beating
his classmates, not on the subject matter. The fact that there is a
difference between the two goes a long way toward explaining why
competition may actually make us less successful."
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