No Contest: The Case Against Competition

by Alfie Kohn

No Contest stands as the definitive critique of competition. Contrary to accepted wisdom, competition is not basic to human nature; it poisons our relationships and holds us back from doing our best. In this new edition, Alfie Kohn argues that the race to win turns all of us into losers.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Parenting, Psychology, Economics, Politics, Business

340 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Alfie Kohn writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. The author of fourteen 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."

Kohn lives (actually) in the Boston area with his wife and two children, and (virtually) at www.alfiekohn.org.

Reviews

[Jonathan Gascho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thorough and pointed. I had never even considered competition as anything but a positive force in our society, but Kohn's case is destabilising. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how these ideas fit into my life and world - don't read this if you're not prepared to set aside the necessary time for reflection.

My first thoughts: Ender's Game was one of my favourite books growing up. I think it might still be, but for different reasons. When I read it as a teenager I loved how driven the children in Battle School were. It was like a hypercompetitive, orbiting version of Hogwarts, complete with its own Battle Room game in place of Quidditch. How fun would that be? Spoilers for Ender's Game ahead, if you care. The protagonist, young child Ender Wiggin, is unknowingly Earth's last hope in the war against the 'buggers'. And Earth's military has determined that the only way to win this war is to take Earth's brightest children - too young to have lived through the previous encounter with the buggers - and mould them in an intensely hypercompetive environment to create ruthless murderchildren military generals. But not too murder-y; they need to be empathetic enough to walk in the enemy's shoes. To become the enemy in order to understand the enemy's weaknesses. But too much empathy might create hesitation - even for the best groomed murderchild - to commit genocide. Needless to say, the Battle School administration has a delicate game of deception to play. And they play it. With guilt, they break little Ender Wiggin. And in return, he breaks the buggers. Earth wins! Then Ender is promptly discarded, left to wander in exile and ruminate over his actions.

The younger version of myself didn't think much about the clear self-destruction Ender was experiencing. I was thirsty for more victory! So I checked out of the library the sequel of Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead. I was very disappointed with it. I didn't want to read about adult Ender trying to right his wrongs in a small-town-small-planet backdrop! I wanted more competition! More brilliant, scheming murderchildren! In the wake of No Contest, I might be due for a re-read Speaker.

My second thought is what this means for my athletics goals. Competitive running has been an anchor in my life for several years. I'm faster now than I ever have been. Running has been the source of so many positive lifestyle choices, experiences, friendships and emotions that it couldn't possibly be bad, right? My old framework for racing was to focus on the guy I wanted to beat and hang on for dear life. Use him, and when the opportunity presented itself: crush his soul. This is one strategy, but it's not a great one. For the good races that I had where it worked, I had many others where I ran far below my physical ability.

So now I'm experimenting. What if instead of defeating rival athletes, my goal was simply to run fast? Running fast is well known to be challenging - if not impossible - by yourself. To run a fast time, you need someone to either hold on to or to push you. The implicit assumption being that this competitive structure is what drives you to post better times. But after reading The Case Against Competition, I would like to suggest that maybe this effect could be better explained by cooperation. The athlete racing in a strong field benefits from the presence of more quick legs. Attempting to break away from the pack early is considered bold, or foolish, depending on the result. Early breaks get tightened or lost as running alone gets increasingly more challenging and the group more efficiently adjusts to the quicker pace. Is this competition, or cooperation at work here? The fastest times are only possible when the group agrees to run at both an agressive and sustainable pace. Any athlete desiring to put her positioning ahead of the group hurts both hers and the group's times. You have to ask yourself: what is more important? My time or my ranking?

Championship races, where position is incentivised over actual speed, notoriously are run at slower paces than those at qualifying meets. If the competition hypothesis were true, you would assume that a gathering of the best runners in the world would most often produce the environment where the fastest races are run. But it doesn't happen this way. Championship medal systems redirect true running excellence into servicing the egos of armchair nationalists. Their egos are very important. The message to athletes is clear. Don't run fast. Race to win.

I'm not a national level athlete. And you, person reading this, are probably not either. But that should not and hopefully does not stop you from pursuing excellence in your life. I'm getting faster! Will I ever be fast enough to 'matter' to an armchair nationalist? Probably not. I run for me. Racing can be problematic as a competitive structure - but it's your choice as an athlete to frame racing as mutually exclusive goal attainment. For me, racing is an opportunity to run fast with other fast runners. And in participating, I can cooperate with other athletes to help them run faster in pursuit of their own personal running goals. Who cares who finishes first as long as we all run well?! In my life I have 'won' races with thin fields where I was not happy with my performance. It's a hollow feeling. Take away the first place medal and it's just one race where I didn't meet my own expectations. That's fine, I can live with that. What I can't live with is the joy of victory being substituted instead for misery. Mutually exclusive goal attainment can play that trick.

This is a challenging book. It does not sit flushly with my life and environment. There's some questionable Freudian mystery meat. But I'm trying to integrate what I can. This is what I'm taking away:

1) Recognise competitive structures where they exist and cooperate where possible.
2) Zero-sum situations are largely manufactured.
3) The dog-eat-dog world is inefficient.
4) Chase excellence and mastery over victory and dominance.

[Sean Saulsbury · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a huge fan of Kohn's other more popular works (Unconditional Parenting, Punished by Rewards), I was intrigued by this title. Sports are such a big part of our culture, and I've witnessed families and children get caught up in them in an unhealthy way. The book made me consider whether it was something about the nature of competition itself that was at the core of his kind of unhealthy behavior.

Unfortunately, Kohn doesn't prove his case. The overall thesis is good: wherever possible, look for win/win relationships rather than win/lose. I think that is a good rule of thumb. But his indictment of competition as such isn't convincing.

First of all, he takes an entire chapter in the beginning of the book to say that by competition he does *not* mean "competing" with nature. So if you're facing off with a lion or growing some tomatoes, even though that is "win/lose," it is also just nature. He is only taking issue with *man-made* competition, i.e., scenarios set up where one person must fail or lose in order than another may win.

Throughout the book, he then attempts apply this, not only to child-rearing, but also to politics, and shun capitalism as a system of competition. It's difficult to parse through the book's basic thesis because of this frequent shift between politics and parenting/education.

Particularly in politics he does not prove his thesis. Capitalism is a system of competition, and so it must be bad. But the very arguments against capitalism and free markets can also be used to champion them, if viewed in a different light. Yes, capitalism is system of competition -- but it is also a system of cooperation. Capitalism says that men must deal with one another, not by *force*, but by *voluntary* free trade. It *is* fundamentally more a system of win/win relationships than it is win/lose.

Politics aside, I did not find the arguments against competition convincing. Kohn argues that making love conditional--on winning a game or gettin a grade, etc.--is detrimental to the child's development (Kohn makes this argument much more extensively in Unconditional Parenting). But that doesn't convince me that the problem is competition as such. It certainly is something to be aware and not overdo, but is it by its nature harmful?

I did like the suggestions to look for win/win relationships wherever possible. I do agree there are too many and unnecessary win/lose scenarios and games in childhood. In this light, some suggestions on cooperative games were certainly valuable.

But overall Kohn's political views serve as a huge distraction to his thesis and, unfortunately, I was left unconvinced.

[Adam Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fantastic look at how competition is fundamentally destructive to human life. Competition is lauded in everything in our culture, from economics to sports, career advancement, and bleeds into nearly everything we do, say, and think. Yet as this meticulously researched book shows, competition hurts everyone, increases stress, anxiety and depression, makes our news less informed, our lives less healthy and happy, and turns our political system into a sham. I would put this book on every Basic Human Existence 101 class. Should be required reading for, well, everyone.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

AK is an exceptional researcher and author. I wanted to pull my kids out of every competitive endeavor they were currently signed up for. The book is really brilliant. The one drawback to his arguments is this: we as a human species haven't moved beyond war and brutality and until everyone can get along, there are still lessons to be learned in competition. I realize it isn't perfect, but it is fact.

P 61 Jenifer Levin cited two studies showing that "when one does compete, intrinsic motivation tends to dramatically decrease, especially for women."
Again, this effect is especially salient in the classroom. The late John Holt put it well:
We destroy the . . . love of learning in children, which is so strong when they are small, by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty and contemptible rewards — gold stars, or papers marked 100 and tacked to the wall, or A's on report cards, or honor rolls, or dean's lists, or Phi Beta Kappa keys — in short, for the ignoble satisfaction of feeling that they are better than someone else.'1'1
This process is shameful for many reasons, but the one 1 want to stress here is the resultant decline in learning. Performance ultimately suffers from competition just as it suffers from the use of any extrinsic motivator.
One final observation: to the extent that an extrinsic motivator can have a positive effect, one of the most powerful motivators is not money or victory but a sense of accountability to other people. This is precisely what cooperation establishes: the knowledge that others are depending on you.6' The only stake others have in your performance under a competitive arrangement is a desire to see you fail.
The distinction between trying to do well and trying to beat others is not the only explanation we can come up with for competition's failure. Competition also precludes the more efficient use of resources that cooperation allows. One of the clear implications of the research conducted by David and Roger Johnson is that people working cooperatively succeed because a group is greater than the sum of its parts. This is not necessarily true for all activities, of course: sometimes independent work is the best approach. But very often — more often than many of us assume — cooperation takes advantage of the skills of each member as well as the mysterious but undeniable process by which interaction seems to enhance individuals' abilities. Coordination of effort and division of labor are possible when people work with each other, as Deutsch saw. Non cooperative approaches, by-contrast, almost always involve duplication of effort, since someone working independently must spend time and skills on problems that already have been encountered and overcome by someone else.

P 84 William A. Sadler, finally, notes that sports not only are not isolated from daily life (as play must be), but they actively train participants for that life as it is lived in our society.
Athletes often are well aware that what they do is not play [he writes]. Their practice sessions are workouts; and to win the game they have in work harder. Sports are not experienced as activities outside the institutional pattern of the American way of life: they are integrally a part of it. ... In other words, the old cliche is true: "Spoils prepare one for-life." The question which must be raised is: "what kind of life.-" The answer in an American context is that (they prepare us for a life of competition.
Competitive recreation is anything but a time-out from goal-oriented activities. It has an internal goal, which is to win. And it has an external goal, which is to train its participants. Train them to do what? To accept a goal-oriented model. Sports is thus many steps removed from play.
The argument here is not merely academic. Even when they do not talk explicitly about play, apologists for sport like to argue that it offers a "time out" from the rest of life. No matter how brutal or authoritarian sports might be. We are supposed to see them as taking place in a social vacuum. ! His claim has the effect of excusing whatever takes place on a playing field. (While governor of California, Ronald Reagan reportedly advised a college football team that they could "feel a clean hatred for ["their] opponent, it is a (lean haired since it's only symbolic in a jersey. It also has the effect of obscuring the close relationship between competitive recreation and the society that endorses it.

P 85 Writing in the journal of PE and Recreation, George Sage observed that:
organized sport — From youth programs to the pros — has nothing at all to do with playfulness — fun, joy,. self-satisfaction — but is instead, ,a social agent for the deliberate socialization of people into the acceptance of …the prevailing social structure and their fate as workers within bureaucratic organizations. Contrary to the myths propounded by promoters, sports are instruments not for human expression, but of social stasis.''
Sport does not simply build character, in other words; it builds exactly the kind of character that is most useful for the social system. From the perspective of our social (and economic) system — which is to say, from the perspective of those who benefit from and direct it — it is useful to have people regard each other as rivals. Sports serve the purpose nicely, and athletes are quite deliberately led lo accept the value and naturalness of an adversarial relationship in place of solidarity and collective effort. If he is in a team sport, the athlete comes to see cooperation only as a means lo victory, to see hostility and even aggression as legitimate, to accept conformity and authoritarianism. Participation in sports amounts to a kind of apprenticeship for life in contemporary America, or as David Riesman put it. "'The road to the board room leads through the locker room."
One of the least frequently noticed features of competition — and, specifically, of its product-orientation — is the emphasis on quantification."' In one sense, competition is obviously a process of ranking: who is best, second best, and so forth. But the information necessary to this process is itself numerical.

P 94 In noncompetitive games, the obstacle is something intrinsic to the task itself rather than another person or persons. It coordinated effort is required to achieve the goal, then the game becomes not merely noncompetitive but positively cooperative. Such coordination invariably involves the presence of rules. While competitive activities are particularly dependent on rules — and inflexible rules, at that — it is not the case that the only alternative to competition is the "Caucus-race" described in Alice in Wonderland, in which participants "began running when they liked, and left off when they liked."4' While such an activity more closely approximates pure play, noncompetitive games are generally rule-governed. Thus, the presence of rules does not imply the presence of competition.48
Partly because they do have rules, noncompetitive games can be at least as challenging as their competitive counterparts. They are also a good deal of fun, and, like the Caucus-race, can have the happy result that " 'Everybody has won and all must have prizes.' "49 Consider musical chairs, an American classic for small children. In this game, a prototype of artificial scarcity, x players scramble for x — 1 chairs when the music stops. Each round eliminates one player and one chair until finally one triumphant winner emerges. All of the other players have lost — and have been sitting on the sidelines for varying lengths of time, excluded from play. Terry Orlick proposes instead that when a chair is removed after each round, the players should try to find room on the chairs that remain — a task that becomes more difficult and more fun as the game progresses. The final result is a group of giggling children crowded onto a single chair.
As early as 1950. Theodore F. Lentz and Ruth Cornelius published their own manual of cooperative games. Among them are Cooperative Chinese Checkers, the object of which is not to move one's marbles faster than the other player but to coordinate the two players' movements so that they reach their respective home sections simultaneously. In Cooperative Bowling, similarly, the purpose is to "knock down the ten pins in as many rounds as there are players" — a very challenging task indeed.' Another good game is bump and scoot volleyball.

P 125 product orientation: Play, it was argued in the last chapter, is activity for its own sake. It reflects a "process orientation" — an inclination to do something because of its intrinsic value. Such behavior is rare among adults in our society. We are product oriented. Our work is governed by the demands of the "bottom line" and often is justified as an onerous necessity of life. The time we spend in school similarly is construed as valuable only insofar as it contributes to later employment, with the pleas for relevance in our universities having evolved into a demand for marketable skills. Even leisure activities have come to resemble work: results are what matter.

P 135 To win for his team a boy beats his best friend . . . [so] winning means also losing something precious in the relationship with a friend. For it is not likely that the two will compete on the football held and have a close and loving relationship off it, not likely that they can put on a show of invincibility during the game and share their fears and vulnerabilities after it. Not very different, is it, from the world of work for which he is destined? . . . Not very good training, is it, for the kind of sharing of self and emotional support friendship requires-'1"
The assertion one sometimes hears to the effect that competition need not interfere with friendship assumes that our orientation toward someone can switch from supportive to rivalries and back again as if we were changing television channels. It is simply unrealistic. I think that the hostility engendered by and experienced during a contest will evaporate into thin air, leaving the relationship between the two individuals unaffected. I do not mean to say that no one has ever had a satisfying relationship with a competitor, but that competition inhibits such relationships, just as it corrodes the relationships we have already developed. This chapter is concerned with the reason this happens and the consequences it brings.

ANATOMY OF A RIVAL
Simply from knowing that competition damages self-esteem, we can predict that relationships will be in trouble. This seems to follow from Harry Stack Sullivan's comment in the last chapter to the effect that it is difficult for me to feel good about others when I don't feel good about myself. I feel my worth is in doubt — it is contingent on winning — so I am unable to extend myself to you. From her research with children, psychologist Carole Ames concluded that just such a connection between self-esteem and relationship exists: "The experience of failure in competitive settings that resulted in depressed beliefs in their own ability ... is likely to affect negatively the child's own feelings of competence and self-worth and potentially interfere with future relationships with others

P 145 Innumerable studies of aggression in children have illustrated that attempts to reduce aggression through the use of aggressive and vigorous play therapy have the opposite effect. . . . Sports participation may heighten aggressive tendencies." says one.1'1 "Engaging in aggressive sports or observing aggressive sports . . . typically leads| to increased rather than decreased aggression." says another.11 "Participation in competitive, aggressive sports . . . may more rightfully be viewed as a disinhibition training that ultimately promotes violent reactions." says a third.'' And from yet another source: " The balance of evidence ... is that sports involvement may heighten arousal, produce instances of aggressive behaviors and their reward, and provide a context in which the emulation of such behaviors is condoned
… sport represents a kind of circumscribed warfare — something pointed out not only by such critics as George Orwell, who called it "war minus the shooting,"' but also by generals: It was Wellington who said that the battle of Waterloo was "won on the playing fields of Harrow and Eton." It was Douglass MacArthur who said: "Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that, upon other fields, on other days, will bear the fruit of victory." And it was Eisenhower who said that "the true mission o; American sports is to prepare young people for war.'” The point is not that athletes will rush to enlist, but that athletic competition both consists in and promotes warlike aggression

p 147 One must marvel at the intellectual quality of a teacher who can’t understand why children assault one another in the hallway, playground, and city street, when in the classroom the highest accolades are reserved for those who have beaten their peers, in many subtle and some not so subtle ways, teachers demonstrate that what children learn means less than that they triumph over their classmates. Is this not assault? . . . Classroom defeat is only the pebble that creates widening ripples of hostility. It is self-perpetuating. It is reinforced by peer censure, parental disapproval, and loss of self-concept. If the (classroom is a model, and if that classroom models competition, assault in the hallways should surprise no one

p 198 I have already argued that few values are more persistently promoted in American classrooms than the desirability of trying to beat other people. Sometimes this lesson is presented with all the subtlety of a fist in the face, as with the use of spelling bees, grades on a curve (a version of artificial scarcity in which my chance of receiving an A is reduced by your getting one), awards assemblies, and other practices that redefine the majority of children as losers.
At other times, competition is promoted tacitly, perhaps even unwittingly, by pitting students against one another for the teacher's attention and approval. This may occur through the use of manipulative behavior management strategies - for example, a public announcement such as: "I like the way Joanne is sitting so nice and quiet." (A contest has been created for Nicest, Quietest Pupil, and everyone except Joanne has just lost.) Or it may follow from the conventional arrangement of asking a question of the whole class.
The teacher asks the question, the students who think they know the answer raise their hands, and the teacher calls on one of them. We've all seen it many times: when one student is called on the other students who have their hands up register their disappointment with a little "Oh." It's a structure that sets the kids against each other.
Anyone who doubts that competition is the subtext of most whole class question-and-answer sessions need only continue watching the faces of the children who were not recognized. Are they rooting for Jeremy, who now has the floor, to succeed? Hardly. They are hoping he says something stupid because this will present them with another opportunity to triumph. The teacher's face is scanned for signs of dissatisfaction with Jeremy’s answer; once they find it, the children's hands shoot up again, fingers reaching anxiously for the fluorescent lights. Some students participate energetically in this scramble to be first with the right response, while others stare dully and look beaten (which, at some point, they have been).

P 208 But maybe students genuinely find life at school to be a collection of tedious tasks and humiliating evaluations from which any reasonable person would want to escape.
If children seem unhappy about going to school, we typically attribute this to the fact that kids just are wont to complain, that they don't like anything — or at least anything good for them. Then we insist that they had better get used to things that aren't any fun. (The premise here seems to be that the chief purpose of school is not to get children excited about learning but to get them acclimated to doing mind-numbing chores.)
It is also possible, however, to conclude that the problem may just lie with what happens in school rather than with some character flaw in the individual child. The extent of "on-task" behavior in a classroom, by the same token, may tell us something about the teacher as well as about the students. When a teacher complains that children are off task, our first response should be to ask, "What is the task?" (In the long run, though, individual teachers probably are not to blame, given that decisions about what children must learn and how they must learn it are frequently made by administrators, school board members, parents, politicians, and faculty members at schools of education.)
Goodlad ticks off what students are asked to do: passively listen to teachers’ ceaseless talking (in his survey, the average teacher “outtalked the entire class of students by a ratio of about three to one"), submit to close and constant monitoring, work separately and silently on textbooks and worksheets, and so on.
How would I react as an adult to these ways of the classroom? I would become restless. I would groan audibly over still another seatwork assignment. My mind would wander off soon after the beginning of a lecture. It would be necessary for me to put my mind in some kind of "hold" position. This is what students do. Intellectual Interaction: most important, CL succeeds because “none of us is as smart as all of us.

P 232 Many parents, looking back on their own years in school, may recall a superlative teacher here, a few satisfying friendships there, an occasional moment of excitement when a connection was made or an idea understood. But the background to these pleasant memories may be something much like what Goodlad and Henry and scores of other observers have documented: isolation, humiliation, self-doubt, rivalry, pointless tasks, boredom. All of us for whom this account rings true have a choice to make.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trying to be #1 and trying to do a task well are two different things.

Eye-opening for me in 2018.

pp. 19: "While we many not be unavoidable cooperative, we are, at worst, not unavoidably anything at all."

pp. 34: Sharing is/was a way of life in primitive societies - scarce resources shared within societies in proportion to need. Hobbes' fantasy of a war of all against all could not be further from the truth.

There is strong positive correlation between competitiveness in society and economic maldistribution (tautology, or aphorism?).

pp. 39: The norms of culture determine competitiveness, not the scarcity of abundance of resources.

pp. 46: "Competition need never enter the picture in order for skills to be mastered and displayed, goals set and met."

pp. 71: Arthur Combs: "Competition seeks to prove superiority, but rarely if ever produces superiority or superior products and services."

Safety is another victim of competition (airplanes, pharma, pollution, etc.).

A lost pleasure? - the aesthetic pleasure of being great at something, regardless of what others think or do.

Lack of self-esteem is a prime motivation for many/most competitive people -- YES. I've seen this throughout my 50+ spins around the sun. The most competitive people I know are miserable self-haters, even when they are "winning". They see every aspect of life as competition. Competition as damage control: not about winning but all about not losing. Vindication, not triumph. To lose is a dreadful confirmation of all fears. The struggle to win is a desperate, vain effort to convince themselves of their own value.

Another consequence of our culture of competition: we become product-oriented. Work governed by the bottom line. Time in school, training is seen as valuable only insofar as it contributes to later employment. Focus on "marketable" skills. Even leisure activities resemble work - only results matter. We are what we produce.

pp. 129: Competition only works between comparable things. Competitors all tend to be alike, less-differentiated. All seeking the same goals, following the same rules. More competition --> more conformity. Competition dampens creativity.

Life as a series of contests turns us into cautious, boring/bored people. Less creative, less inclined to take new opportunities.

pp. 180: Super-interesting take on "pseudo-feminism", which wants women to be just as competitive as men. "For women to pump up their biceps or break into the club of hard-driving money grubbers on Wall Street is a peculiar and sad kind of liberation."

[Tory S. Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving it four stars not for the quality of writing -- I found the one-sided rhetoric tiresome by half way through -- but for the importance of the ideas it has. Despite taking an extreme stance in this book, Kohn gives a solid argument with intelligent research backing it.

The fundamental idea is that competition is destructive in all its forms, and is built into our society to the detriment of all: it is in our education, our economy, or legal system, and our recreation. He systematically approaches each claim for the validity, giving fair voice to their justifications for competition: that it is natural, that it is character-building, that it produces excellence, and that it is naturally desirable to us.

His case against competition is somewhat strong and worth digesting. The suggested alternatives, however, were somewhat lacking. It is in conceiving of solutions that we should use this book as fuel, giving us some ideas of how to convert our environments into non-competitive solutions that will bring the added self-confidence, creativity, and motivation that come from true cooperation. But more I could use more of a picture on a wide-spread vision of cooperation other than his slightly communistic musings and conclusive "competition is evil" voice.

Again, a worthy read with some important ideas to consider, even if it is more of a starting point than any kind of ending.

[Erik Akre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Far more than a treatise on competition in the educational setting, this book ranges as wide as you can imagine, into economics, competitive sports, and even the "pseudofeminism" that pits women against men in a man's arena. Competition is based on external motivation, and when we engage to "win," we remove fun and play from the situation, and impoverish it as such.

Kohn is eloquent in his criticism of capitalism--an economic system based on competition. He writes, "Capitalism works on the same principle as a glass company whose employees spend their nights breaking people's windows and their days boasting of the public service they provide."

Regarding sports, the author examines the tendency shown in win-or-lose situations: the tendency to see things in black-and-white, and the tendency to engage based on insecurity--the need to prove oneself as superior--rather than a spirit of enjoyment and play.

Kohn's argument against competition is most poignant to me as an argument for play. He argues that the fun and spontaneity of human activity is removed when we pit ourselves against each other. His thesis is powerful, and it goes against the status quo to an extreme. He works from ideals, and he will challenge any reader in contemporary America.

[Claire Binkley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This radically changed how I have been encouraged to consider interacting with others.

Life is not so much of a contest, so much of a "whose cuisine reigns supreme?" question, in my experience, as much as a "given these parameters, what suits my purpose?"-type inquiry. (Convenience is far more important than one would imagine!)

I saw the pitfalls of setting students, or interns, or hirelings against each other through this tome.

Mankind makes more progress through teamwork than through fighting. This book has more than a few references for that assertion.

Due to problems, I have been effectively knocked out of "the competition," so to speak; I more clearly see the grounds for there not being a battle at all.

So, for changing my mind about something, or at least giving a formerly weak assertion of mine ("It's not a race!") stronger grounding, I absolutely adore this book.

[K.G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is well worth your time.

If you are like most people in the west, you've been brought up to believe in the value of competition in forging someone's character. I was this way until I read this book. I thought in terms of winners and losers and loved competitive endeavors. This award-winning, well researched book threw cold water in my face and woke me up to a different paradigm. Our society has been built on a dog-eat-dog paradigm and Kohn shows this doesn't build healthy well-adjusted people.

The idea of personal mastery and accomplishment remains alive and well, despite the rejection of "for me to win, you must lose." Kohn provides ideas and solutions for us to consider so that we may grow and evolve together and create a healthier and better world.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting exploration of the concept of competition. While the concept is greatly admired and idealized in our modern culture, Kohn explores the the negative consequences of competition. The book suggests that competition is much more harmful to us as individuals than is typically thought. As an educational expert, he concentrates on the concept of competition in schooling. While he does talk about some other applications of competition, I would have liked for the book to have examined a little more closely competition in the economic sphere as well.

[Ian Roth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my perspective drastically and helped to reach a new plateau of understanding and personal growth. There are sections of it that should be required reading for all the inhabitants of spaceship earth.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for a class and was convinced. Although it would be hard to imagine life without competition, there is a good case in this book that life would be better without it.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar to his other book “Punished by Rewards,” I really liked this one because it suggested an idea I had never considered before: competition is bad. I admire Kohn’s challenging of societal norms. He isn’t afraid to uproot major systems within our society and point out how they may be doing more harm than good. For this reason, his books are interesting to read and they leave me seeing society differently.

His overall thesis is that competition is not ultimately helpful to the human race and should therefore not exist. Cooperation is far more productive and enjoyable (despite what we might think or argue) and competition kills intrinsic joy and motivation. Competition pits people against one another and creates environments of hostility, aggression, and resentment. Competition motivates people to win, not to succeed at or enjoy the task or activity itself. Human beings are far less productive and achieve less when competition rather than cooperation ensues. This made a lot of sense to me, and I marveled at all of the ways competition is subtly and insidiously woven into parts of our lives where competition ought not to be.

Unlike his other book, however, the arguments were not as strong. After each chapter, I had a few questions wondering about this and that and if his ideas applied to this activity or that event. I’m not sure his points were argued seamlessly, and I think if he were met with a person who was adamantly in favor of competition (someone not like me) he would have a harder time convincing them.

I agreed with him that competition is harmful on several fronts such as competition in school, politics, economics, professions, and relationships. My biggest question and my biggest reservation with his thesis was in regards to competitive games (not necessarily on a large scale like professional sports, but on a small and personal scale.) I asked, “but can’t competitive games be fun? Perhaps the competition is not beneficial, but is the game not enjoyable? I know I’ve experienced joy and fun while playing a sport or a card game. Should we do away with all of them?” The best answer I deduced from his writing is that competitive games are fun despite their competitive nature, not because of it. Still, I’m not sure I understand his perspective on what to do with all of the sports, games, and activities we enjoy as a society. At the end of his book, he encourages people to find other games and activities that are cooperative instead of competitive, but I was still left with a lot of questions and a void of solutions.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books during my MBA days. It really changed my thinking on the “value” of competition.

[Marissa Morrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

A couple weeks ago, I came home to find the babysitter (my mom) and my daughter playing a matching game with--gasp!--two piles of paired cards. I took my mother aside and handed her this book. She replied, "I could read it a thousand times and it wouldn't change my mind that competition is healthy."

I'm equally guilty of pigheadedness, I guess, because I never finished reading the book but I'm pretty sure that I agree with it 100 percent. (Kohn's writing is surprisingly tedious in this one, but I really did like every bit of it that I read--especially the parts about gender differences).

[Douglas Larson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I greatly admire Kohn's ideas about competition, how it is but one model that human-kind has followed for millenia. When looking at games we devise and play, Kohn points out that competition creates an artifical scarcity where none existed before. Instead of having a game where there is a winner and a loser (e.g. football, basketgall to name a few), why not track each player's play and then compare it to that same player's prior playing. This way each player can improve their game and no win/lose scenarios need be artifically created. Each player will be a winner.

[Bryan457 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This explains a lot about life as I have experienced it. I will be thinking about it and incorporating its concepts into my worldview and choices for a long time to come.

5 star ideas and concepts set within a
1 star tedious, dry, hard to get through book.

It should not have taken me nearly that long to finish a 196 page book.

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am often mislabeled as competitive. It is true that I do not like to lose, but I do not like to compete and I agreed with many of the authors arguments. Book club was split in their opinions on this one depending on how competitive they are. Not a fun read but an interesting one.

[Edith Lueke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this while still working, long ago. It's been a favorite ever since!

[Jody Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this and you'll realize how ingrained competition is in our society and how damaging it can be.

[Stephen Thomas jr.]

excellent book. It really makes me think about how competition subtley shapes all of our lives and we do not even know it.

[Baba od polskiego · Rating 4 out of 5]

[współpraca płatna]

Dlaczego przegrywamy wyścig po wygraną? Dlatego, że walczymy o wszystko: o sukcesy w pracy, szkole, bycie najzabawniejszym, najbardziej przyjaznym, najmądrzejszym. Uczymy się tego już od najmłodszych lat pytani o to, kto namalował najpiękniejszy obrazek i czy inni mieli lepsze oceny. Idziemy potańczyć i nagle okazuje się, że bierzemy udział w konkursie na mistrzów parkietu, odruchowo szukamy spojrzeń pełnych aprobaty. Doświadczyłam tego wszystkiego, jak każdy, kto czyta te słowa, bo jesteśmy nastawieni na nieustanną rywalizację, którą nazywamy zabawą, drobną dawką adrenaliny, nawet 12 książek Igi Świątek dla wielu było okazją do porównania swoich możliwości w zakresie czytelnictwa i umiejętności znalezienia chwili na odpoczynek.
Podejmuję ten temat po kolejnej książce Alfie Kohna „Bez rywalizacji”, która — tak jak i poprzednie — rezonuje w głowie jeszcze wiele dni po przeczytaniu. Nawet ja, chociaż gotowanie nie jest moją pasją, na żaglach staję w szranki z innymi, bym wraz ze swoją ekipą została uznana za najlepszych kuków. Badacz wymienia różne rodzaje rywalizacji: strukturalną, w której chodzi o społeczny podział na wygranych i przegranych oraz na intencjonalną, czyli naszą wewnętrzną chęć bycia najlepszym. Rzeczywistość to nieustanna rywalizacja. Rekrutacja do szkół przypomina konkursy piękności, niby nie znamy przeciwników, ale nasz sukces wyklucza lub zmniejsza zwycięstwo innej osoby. Bierzemy też udział w rywalizacji, w której musimy doprowadzić do przegranej drugiej strony, tak bywa w sporcie, znacie to też ze „Squid Game”, ja wieki rywalizowałam z sobą samą.
A to wszystko po to, by zadać sobie pytanie, czy jest możliwa edukacja oparta na współpracy?
Kohn przytacza wiele badań, które obalają mity na temat rywalizacji:
nie da się jej uniknąć;
motywuje do wykorzystania własnego potencjału;
to najlepszy sposób na rozrywkę;
kształtuje charakter i dodaje pewności siebie.
Dzieci dzielą się przedmiotami, chętnie częstują innych, okazuje się, że zachowania prospołeczne mogą być wyuczone i wynikać z doświadczenia, jednak bardzo łatwo jest wprowadzić do wychowania rywalizację: „dziecko sąsiada szybciej zrezygnowało z pieluszki”, „je samodzielnie”, „kto kocha cię bardziej?” itd.
Powszechnie uważa się też, że przetrwają najsilniejsi i możemy zaobserwować takie sytuacje w świecie zwierząt, jednak selekcja naturalna nie wymaga rywalizacji, wręcz od niej odwodzi, bo przetrwanie wymaga współpracy, chociaż jest ona często mniej spektakularna. Kohn podaje wiele dowodów naukowych i badań, w których odnajdziemy przesłanki, by tak sądzić.
Czytając Kohna, nieustannie rozważałam, jak zatem wprowadzić współpracę do edukacji, bo przecież przygotowuję młodych ludzi do konkursów i olimpiad, dawno nie stawiam ocen, bo uważam je za podstawowy błąd w podejściu do nauki, a do udziału w konkursach zachęcam jako do kolejnego ćwiczenia, bez znaczenia czy ktoś zwycięży, a przecież później chwalę tych, którzy wygrali. Jak zatem zachować tę równowagę?
Przecież walczymy w szkołach nieustannie, ktoś nie umie wykonać zadania — inna osoba w klasie mówi, jak je rozwiązać — zyskuje sukces, kosztem porażki. Na pierwszych praktykach na studiach dowiedziałam się, że dla dzieci ma znaczenie nawet wielkość piątki, jaką dostały. Tak bardzo potrzebujemy aprobaty i nieustannie konkurujemy, by poczuć, że jesteśmy coś warci. Dość szybko akceptujemy fakt, że życie to gra i musi być wyłoniony zwycięzca. Rozbawił mnie prosty eksperyment wizytacji nauczyciela w jednej ze szkół, w której nie stosuje się ocen, testów i gwiazdek. Spytał on w klasie, kto jest najlepszy w nauce i okazało się, że ani jedno dziecko nie wiedziało, co mu odpowiedzieć, bo wypracowania i rysunki wszystkich ozdabiały ściany w sali lekcyjnej.
Okazuje się, że klasa, w której się współpracuje, jest przecież tym, o czym marzę, gdy mówię o edukacji włączającej, chcę takiej edukacji, w której pomyślne wykonanie zadania zależy od każdego w klasie, więc każdy będzie pragnął osiągnąć sukces. Dowody wskazują także na to, że współpraca utrwala wiedzę, więc wspólna nauka przynosi sukcesy zarówno pomagającym, jak i otrzymującym pomoc.
Dodatkowo Kohn dowodzi, że działanie przeciwko innym nie poprawia naszej wydajności, lepszą motywację zyskują tylko zwycięzcy, ale nieustannie żyją z lękiem o przegraną, a zastosowanie zewnętrznego czynnika motywującego osłabia motywację wewnętrzną. Dodatkowo rywalizacja jest głównym czynnikiem wywołującym niską samoocenę i potęgującym samotność, bo skoro wokół są rywale i rywalki, to brakuje poczucia bezpieczeństwa, a obawa przed porażkami i pamięć poprzednich to recepty na nieustanne poczucie niepokoju.

Kohna wydaje Wydawnictwo Mind, polecam tę książkę wszystkim pedagogom, którzy mówią o potrzebie zmian w systemie oceniania, ale sami nie wiedzą, jak do niej doprowadzić i w gruncie rzeczy woleliby pisać oceny liczbowe zamiast opisowych, bo to mniej pracy. To pozycja konieczna w bibliotece wszystkich zarządzających: szefów/szefowych w korporacjach i dyrektorów/ek placówek edukacyjnych.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a very good starting point for making a case against competition. I would recommend it to everyone . But it requires some further work which one has to do on their own . Also I think as the book alludes to the destructive & wasteful nature of the competitive socio-economic dynamic paradigm governing us all , it is going to offend quite a few people ( those who are able to get through the book) as the book's central proposition challenges the almost universally internalised delusion of so called 'win-win' competition embedded in capitalism. This delusion of course runs deep in the economics academia and any questions are akin to blasphemy.
This central delusion of win-win market competition derives from the fundamental misrepresentation of what constitutes a market transaction which is conceived of as a 'voluntary' exchange between 'free' agents . The mis-conception goes all the way back to Smith who described it as a natural human propensity even though anthropological & ethnographic evidence during his time & subsequently showed otherwise. The propensity to truc & barter has no claim to being natural among Amy species incl. humans. Instead the premise of every market exchange is coercion not a individual or group coercion that capitalists so hate/fear/loathe, rather the coercion is structural. One is not a free agent at all rather one plays a role to be able to get their hands on the mode of mediating one's existence on the market, ie money. The more the scope of the market , the most totalizing it's control on us to play a certain role/any role available. Thus bigger the role of the market , bigger is the structural coercion it exerts on us.
All this is missed though when one starts with the stupifing assumptions & then proceeds to prove the optimality of the market capitalist system based on those assumptions, as any system of 'free' , 'voluntary' arrangements ipso facto proves its optimality. Their is no end to this ridiculousness & no shortage of ink spilled either.

As an example, The Scandinavians aren't happier than anyone else, even they will tell you that. What they may or may not tell you ( because they might not have realized themselves) is that they are less structurally coerced (due to substantial government intervention, limiting the market scope) than their American counterparts. The difference in carnage is plain to see for anyone looking.

Don't tell this your neo-classically (even classically) trained economics/business professor though , it might make their head explode with anger & confusion.

[Victor Yu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is well written and well researched, and extremely well documented. Some may find the writing verbose but I enjoyed it.
His arguments about dissuading our (Americans’) perversion with competition is compelling although I came into this book with a similar mindset that competition corrodes our humanity. In short, competition forces one to believe that to rise up, they must stand on the backs of others. When you zoom out to a macro level, it seems obvious that if widespread (like it is now), the resulting society would generally be selfish and suspicious of others.

The only criticism of this book from me is that I was hoping for compelling alternatives to competition. Other than cooperative learning for students, which he talks about at the end of the book in great length, what day-to-day things could we as individuals to detach from a society that worships competition? Regardless, I hope this book does well in detailing to others the harmful effects of competition, even what we usually label “healthy competition”.

[Katlu · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute eye opener about one of the paradigms underlying so many areas of our society. Diligently backing everything up with research, and often with a sense of humour, Alfie Kohn goes about myth-busting ideas like “competition is just human nature” or “there would be no excellence without competition”.

As we tend to emphasize cooperation in the workplace today, this book points out the many ways in which we at the same time still sabotage this idea in the education of our kids and even by kind of activities we pursue in our spare time.

One of the best books I have ever read and would recommend everybody to read.

[Clivemichael · Rating 5 out of 5]

As appropriate and relevant today as when it was written. Change comes slowly.
"Each culture provides its own mechanisms for dealing with self-doubts. In our culture which is wedded to the assumption that life is a zero-sum game, one of the chief mechanisms is competition. It is America's compensatory mechanism of choice. Low self-esteem, then, is a necessary but not sufficient cause of competition. The ingredients include an aching need to prove oneself and the approved mechanism for doing so at other peoples expense. When we have both, we have millions of people who try to feel better by making the next person feel worse."

[Lorena]

This was a required book for my BYU sociology class waaaay back when. My teacher was a little obsessed with it, but I don’t remember anything about it today (2020), except the title and the interesting idea of looking for cooperative opportunities for my children instead of competitive activities. I think I need to give this book a re-read. I think of it often.

[Nisanz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some difficult words i can't understand because english not my native language. But got exciting and fresh insight from this book. Good read to contemplate my own belief in regard of competition that has been constructed by society and family as my "right"or "good" Nature as human to survive living in society.

[Georgie Alef · Rating 3 out of 5]

No sure what I think of this concept. It is in our nature to be in relationship but we must feel fulfilled also.

[Gabriel Sims-Fewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading.