No Contest, which has been stirring up controversy since its publication in 1986, stands as the definitive critique of competition. Drawing from hundreds of studies, Alfie Kohn eloquently argues that our struggle to defeat each other -- at work, at school, at play, and at home -- turns all of us into losers.
Contrary to the myths with which we have been raised, Kohn shows that competition is not an inevitable part of "human nature." It does not motivate us to do our best (in fact, the reason our workplaces and schools are in trouble is that they value competitiveness instead of excellence.) Rather than building character, competition sabotages self-esteem and ruins relationships. It even warps recreation by turning the playing field into a battlefield.
No Contest makes a powerful case that "healthy competition" is a contradiction in terms. Because any win/lose arrangement is undesirable, we will have to restructure our institutions for the benefit of ourselves, our children, and our society. For this [1992] revised edition, Kohn adds a comprehensive account of how students can learn more effectively by working cooperatively in the classroom instead of struggling to be Number One. He also offers a pointed and personal afterword, assessing shifts in American thinking on competition and describing reactions to his provocative message. |
"Alfie Kohn marshals the evidence that [competition] is not the mainspring of achievement in industry, the arts, education, or games." -- Dr. Benjamin Spock
"We have been in prison from wrong teaching. By perceiving that cooperation is the answer, not competition, Alfie Kohn opens a new world of living. I am deeply indebted to him."
-- W. Edwards Deming
"Alfie Kohn's critique of the role of competition in our society is a really impressive piece of work. Challenging and thoughtful, it reaches to the heart of many problems of our social life and the ideology that constrains and distorts it."
‑‑ Noam Chomsky
"Well‑researched and sound, No Contest exposes erroneous assumptions about the inevitability and value of competition. This book...deserves our attention." ‑‑ Carl Rogers "Superbly researched, lucidly written." -- Los Angeles Times |
competition
October 2008 
I-P
Access: Public
I think competition in our society tends to be a way to condition people to accept the hierarchical status quo, and to believe that those in power got that way because they are the best at what they do. Which is not true unless you mean the best at taking everything from everyone!
thanks for your comment pookietooth,
I agree with you and would add that the criteria of what is “best”, and the definition of “what a person does and is” are related in my mind in a way that I think is important in relation to competion. what I mean is that, from my point of view, someone indentifying as first and foremost an authentic individual-person can't really compete because they are trying to be ever-more-authentically-Themselves-in-way-that-serves-the world-outside-them and such a thing is (under the circumstances) much more than a full time job. That is, anyone who understands the extreem difficulty of the work of inner and outer individuation has no time or use for the kind of “moonlighting” that happens with a specialized identity, (in which one can take off ones “individual-person hat” and puts on,say, ones “writers hat” or ones “managers” hat and thus implicitely competing with other “writers” and “managers”).
For anyone holding such an identity-politics, any more specialized thing a person does is evaluated not as an identity but as a specific action and activity that at any given time and circumstance, is leading them and the world closer to, or futher away from wholeness; in terms of whether or not the action, (either in itself or as it is currently being done) is one that is deepening them in a healing relationship with themselves and the world. Its no longer a matter of “being a writer” but one of whether a specific act of writing (at a specific time, in a specific way in a specific life), is inspiring both the individual-person acting and others outside that person, to greater wholeness and authenticity; a matter of degree to which that specific action is a gesture of/toward inner/outer healing. (and thus an ornament rather than a blot on that persons individual-personhood)
Realizing oneself as a Person (being a good individual-person) then, is something that is not only inimical to competition (since it is about realizing ones singular INDIVUALITY in a socially responcible way–and no one can be a better me than me), it actually Requires cooperation (or a least an of ongoing attempt at consensual, win-win coming-together with others), since part of being a “good Me” means inspiring and helping to enable you to be a “good You”. (the reason for this is not only that people who are free to be themselves cannot help but try to engender this in others, but that people who are not free to be themselves cannot help but try to squash this freedom in others. Therefor, even if the impulse to free others from alienated and false identity-politics were not a spontaneous expression of a persons authentic SelfNature, an individual-person can only make the world safe for their own further progress in their own social individuation–their own respocible freedom–by furthering that of others).
I suppose that, even acknowledging such cicumstances, a hard core competitor might still be able to see some competitive angle in terms of “who is being the most inspiring” in this healthy way, but such a point of view could only be that of an alienated spectator who has still not seen and been inspired by the fact that “individidual-personhood” is not just another “hat” that one wears as part of another competative “identity-uniform” but the actual singular heads and bodies of real persons who are mutually engaged in seeing that everyone is clothed,(when they need to be clothed at all) not in any uniform, but in the clothes that fit each one best at any givin time, circumstance and stage of growth in the common work of making a more healthy world… hierarchy in such a living healthy culture would be seen as an obvious problem and a harm to a “status quo” that is no longer one of inner/outer apartness and alienation in terms of rigid, factional, and specialized identities, but of inner and outer togetherness and healing in terms of each persons singular and changing expression of a paradoxically shared individual-personhood…
Thanks again for commenting and for inspiring more of an original commentary to a post that would otherwise be just an advertizement for a very good book. (though there's nothing wrong with that…)
take care,
I-P