responsibility and cooperation

I have been lately reflecting on competition and cooperation as models of learning. But I am not so happy with these distinctions, because there is some hidden idea that they seem to suggest, or reflect. Competition, for me, seems to be an overdrive of the notion of personal responsibility. According to the model of competition, I and I alone must be able to make decisions and bring out my own potentials.  And this potential needs to be brought out without interference or interruption from other people. Competition often assumes that there is one source of power within me, and I need to be able to exert it in order to survive. Is this called will to power?

Cooperation, on the other hand, might be said to be an overdrive of community. That is, cooperation ensures that all beings are interconnecting for a common good or a shared goal.  Cooperation subordinates the strength or will of others to a shared goal. With cooperation, who one is only matters insofar as one is actively in a community of others.

And so I begin to ask, based on these dynamics, is one more important than the other?

When personal responsibility and community are in balance, something different seems to happen. Rather than seeing myself as solely responsible for my potential, I can see that potential as important only insofar as it touches its roots into community of some kind.  But if I am relying too much on others to define what I can do, I miss out on the abilities I might have that have not been tapped before. The two are indispensable in a way. One implication of this is that solitude is indispensable for true community. If I am unable to reflect on who I am and what inclinations exist within me, I am only being tossed by scattered thoughts about what I should be doing. Personal reflection seems to come from a deeper space, from knowing where I really touch earth.

The question is, are either competition or cooperation the real roots of learning? I would have to say not really. They are only one of many conditions for learning. It is interesting to me that educational research has chosen these two ‘C’s to get fixated upon, and it would take a social theorist to step in and try to understand why these  two C’s are so important to educational thinking. I am sure that much of it is based on the politics that are happening around schools. Cooperation was a big issue around the time of the Great Depression, when it was felt that people needed to work together and share resources to survive. And it shifted to competition when nations tried to be the first to be on the  moon. Do these two things, competition and cooperation, really lead to learning? Again, I am not sure. I think it is better to say that thinking emphasizes responsibility and community at different times in history, depending on political situations. 

Responsibility becomes the rallying cry when nations perceive a threat from outside, and try to brace people to prepare for battle. It is the cry of ‘shape up’ or get wiped out by another, more dominant group of people. Cooperation becomes the rallying cry when the ‘enemy’ appears to be within, as when nations oppose hoarding of internal wealth or loss of work for many people. But do these principles apply to learning? I feel that they are just concepts that are designed to arouse people to bring  out their best efforts to achieve a goal. But I doubt if they have anything to do with a real love of learning. Love of learning happens when people ease up on trying to be better than others or please others all the time. It happens when people have a space not to be coerced by things around them, but to find fascination in the things themselves.