Aaron Swartz has a story about Alfie Kohn, a psychologist - I think he must be a psychologist - with radical, but basically sensible ideas about punishments and rewards. He makes a strong stand for not doing either.
But he (and Aaron) also are adamantly anti-competition, and although I haven't read much on the position of either of them, I thought I'd share my thoughts on this topic.
I don't know how to do trackbacks (nor what they are supposed to do). If they do something nice, I apologize to Aaron for not giving him one. As it is I just post my comment in that thread here as well.
"Now, as it relates to raising a child (which I will start doing in a couple of months now), I fundamentally agree with the idea that right and wrong can never be taught with rewards and punishments (my wife is somewhat more sympathetic to rewards than I am, but I don't think the difference is all that big in practice). Of course, this applies only to "artificial", or deliberate/manipulative awards. I will still smile when my son does something that warms my heart, and if my son hits the other kids in the playground, I'll have to take him away from there and explain to him that we can't go there if he hurts his playmates.
But I don't entirely understand what this has to do with competition. There is destructive competition, yes. That's why my wife likes that picture of a child Mozart with "Wanted: CHILD PRODIGY. Has made the life unbearable for thousands of young pianists", I suppose :-) . And sometimes the competitive elements are best left out. When we play scrabble I won't keep score, because I think the beauty of the words and patterns outweights, and is sabotaged by, too much competition.
But there's positive competition, too. I am a big fan of german board games, which are usually (but not always) competitive. The key issue for me is that you don't need to win for the game to be enjoyable. That's a large part of what good game design is.
On the other hand, everything from "tag" to Mastermind(c) to playing the piano can be made into a bitter, competitive game if you play with the wrong people. Although certain games are more destructively competitive than others, it seems to me that "Competition doesn't hurt people, people hurt people" to paraphrase that old slogan."
The purely non-competitive games I know about are: just about all role-playing games, Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings game, Mastermind (noone actually keeps track of past results like the rulebook suggests, right?). Also, many children's games like "tag" and "hide and seek" have little real competition.
(On a side note, the wizards in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books follow a no-rewards-no-punishments philosophy. Nice to read if you want to see an anarchist-taoist take on that :-)
UPDATE: When I read up on Reiner Knizia, and I found an interview with this nugget:
Q: What makes a good game?
Knizia: This is my favourite answer. In a good game the losers also win (Equally in a bad game the winner also loses).
Posted by vintermann at April 25, 2005 09:52 AM