Alfie Kohn, Cooperative Games, and Playing for a Better World
Have you read No Contest: The Case Against Competition by Alfie Kohn? This seminal book is key to understanding why cooperative games are not only fun, but also a portal to a better place—a cooperative place where we can live and learn together. Trapped as we are in the competitive matrix, we wonder why we see so much strife and polarization in the world today. The ubiquity of competition—as well as its largely unexamined social effects—underlie the dysfunction. At least, this is the conclusion I reached upon reading Kohn's influential critique of competition years ago. You can learn more about the important book No Contest on Alfie Kohn's website:
https://www.alfiekohn.org/contest/
Alfie Kohn is especially on my mind today because the latest episode of his Kohn Zone podcast, titled "Fun Without Winning or Losing," is devoted to cooperative games. In the episode, Kohn questions the common practice of conflating competition with fun. He explains why the fun we experience through playing cooperative games, as opposed to competitive games, is by far the more genuine and satisfying option. You can listen here:
https://www.alfiekohn.org/podcasts/coop-games-kz/
I was honored when Alfie Kohn agreed to write the foreword to my book Cooperative Games in Education: Building Community Without Competition, published by Teachers College Press in 2022:
https://www.tcpress.com/products/cooperative-games-in-education_9780807766668
One of the games featured in the book is Cooperative Musical Chairs, developed by Terry Orlick. The directions for this game are reprinted below. As Kohn recounts in today's podcast, Cooperative Musical Chairs offers a refreshing alternative to the traditional elimination-based game—the version he remembers playing as a child and not particularly enjoying. Rather than rewarding exclusion, Cooperative Musical Chairs challenges players to work together so that everyone can win, and no one gets excluded. In doing so, an exercise in sorting and vanquishing is transformed into a fun experience of community, inclusion, and shared success.
