Page 366 - The Social Animal

348 The Social Animal

the student comes up with the right answer, the teacher smiles, nods
approvingly, and goes on to the next question. This is a great reward
for that student. At that moment, however, an audible groan can be
heard coming from the youngsters who were striving to be called on
but were ignored. It is obvious they are upset because they missed an
opportunity to show the teacher how smart they are.
Through this process, students learn several things in addition to
the material being covered. First, they learn there is only one expert
in the classroom: the teacher. The students also learn that the payoff
comes from pleasing the teacher by actively displaying how smart
they are. There is no payoff for consulting with their peers. Indeed,
many learn that their peers are their enemies—to be defeated. More-
over, collaboration is frowned upon by most teachers; if it occurs dur-
ing class time it is seen as disruptive, and if it takes place during an
exam, it is called cheating.
In this highly competitive dynamic, if you are a student who
knows the correct answer and the teacher calls on one of your peers,
chances are you will hope that he or she will come up with the wrong
answer so you will have a chance to show the teacher how smart you
are. Those who fail when called on, or those who do not even raise
their hands to compete, have a tendency to resent those who succeed.
The successful students, for their part, often hold the unsuccessful
students in contempt; they consider them to be stupid and uninter-
esting. This process discourages friendliness and understanding. It
tends to create enmity, even among students of the same racial group.
When this competitive classroom dynamic is added to a situation al-
ready strained by interracial distrust, it sets the stage for the kind of
turmoil we encountered in Austin.
Although, at that time, competitiveness in the classroom was
nearly universal, as social psychologists, we realized that it didn’t have
to be that way. Based, in part, on the experiment by Muzafer Sherif,
described above, we reasoned that a cooperative process might be
precisely what was needed in this situation. But how to do it? Actu-
ally, it wasn’t that difficult. Within a few days, my students and I suc-
ceeded in developing a simple cooperative method designed
specifically for the classroom. As it turned out, our method was vir-
tually foolproof. We designed it so that, in order to learn the mate-
rial and do well on the upcoming exam, students had to work with
each other and cooperate. Trying to win became dysfunctional. We