A New Kind of Contest

As a psychologist who has concerns about the state of the world and humankind (and who doesn't?), I am aware that one thing which will be needed in the future will be a greater level of cooperation between people.

Cooperation always exists in a tension with competition.  I doubt if that will ever change.  Competition has always been around, and I think it is built into us.  At the same time, the world's survival may also depend on cooperation as much or more than our competitive drive.

One way that we train out children in both cooperation and competition is through sports.  Sports almost always involves competition.  But it always involves cooperation as well.  Only the football team on which players cooperate well has a chance of winning.  Even two tennis players competing with each other have to at least agree on a set of rules and cooperate in the sense of abiding by the rules.  Without that type of cooperation, there could be no game, no fun, and no sense of accomplishment.

But I would suggest that there is a type of competition which could be an even better experience for our children, teaching them to cooperate through competition.  Here is my idea. 

This could be easily be done with elementary schools, high schools or colleges.  It would not have to do with sports but with any activity that requires problem solving and creativity.  Let' say that the contest subject matter is not a sporting event but more like a science fair competition, or a contest of technological innovation.  A pair of teams would be given a goal to achieve, such as building a better mousetrap (or a computer, or a robot, whatever).  They might be a given assortment of materials or tools to use.

Then let's say that the "league" of teams consists of eight school teams.  Each competition date links up two teams together.  (So, for example, in a league of eight teams, there would be four pairs of teams on any given day of competition.)  The two teams linked together on that day then work together towards the goal.  All of the four pairs of teams would have their outcome judged by a single set of judges and given scores.  There would be four scores each week.  Each team would make the same score as the team they were paired with for the week (eight scores but only four different scores.)

Each week, a team would be paired up with a different team, so that by the end of the "season," they would have been paired up with each of the other teams in the "league."  (Seven overall contests in this example.)  The team that would win would be the one with the highest score at the end of the season.  Thus, there would still be competition.  All eight teams would end up with different scores; but in the process, each team would have to learn how to cooperate with another team every week.  Only through such cooperation could they obtain the highest score at the end.  If they failed to cooperate and to use the best skills of the other team, then they will not score well.  Each day of competition would require that they look for, understand, appreciate, and utilize the strengths of the other team members to the maximum extent possible.

Maybe this is already being done somewhere.  If not, I would like to see it tried.  I think that it could be very interesting and that it could train very prosocial values important to our national and global existence.