Competition vs. Cooperation

[Kaed Family]

     My 6 yr. old went to vacation bible day camp.  She loves big social events, enjoys the crafts, and they preach good ideas mostly.  Each day the children are to bring handfuls of coins to raise money for a charity.  The girls put their money in the pink bucket and the boys put their money in the blue bucket.  Then at the end of the night they see if boys or girls brought the most money.  It's done by weight of coins.  One pastor gets slimed if the girls win and the other gets slimed if the boys win. 

     Well they spend the last 10 minutes getting the kids all worked up over boys vs. girls.  One group wins and goes home feeling good about htemselves.  The other half of the kids walk out defeated and feel the need to give more.  My daughter finds the competition quite upsetting on the nights girls don't win.  She's passionate about what she does and was in tears on the car ride home. We've been discussing the issue together.

    So the point is to raise money for a good cause.  Except after 2 nights of this my daughter and I can't figure out what they are raising money for.  They don't make it very clear.  The boys vs. girls competition is very clear though to all the children and parents. 

     I'm annoyed they don't have faith in the children to become passionate about the cause and to have the ability to work together to reach their fund raising goal without slimy gimmicks.  This church is creating animosity between the children who aren't even sure why they are competing.  ugh.  They could focus on cooperation instead of competition and get still get the dollar amount results and also get better moral results from the children. 

[Robyn]

  My boys never understood why contests had to be between boys and girls.  They didn't like the unfriendliness of the competition when the boys would be rude to the girls if the girls lost the competition.  Your story reminds of my youngest son when he was about 9.  The church we used to attend had a competition in the kids' church to see who could memorize the most Bible verses.  Each week the kids were sent home with a verse.  Each child had  a paper race car with her/his name on it that was taped to a track that was on the walls.  I asked Davis if he wanted to do this and he replied, "Why?  If you win all you get is toy from the dollar store.  Why do I want that?"   Yeah he never participated in anything like that. :)

[Meredith]

The trouble with any kind of day camp for children is that the focus tends to drift to being about teaching children - I don't mean teaching them something specific, but setting the scene of teachers and students. Have you read John Gatto's "Seven Lesson Schoolteacher"? The scene you describe with getting the kids all hyped up over something that's completely divorced from what is, supposedly, the point, reminds me of that essay, especially this bit:

 

The third lesson I teach kids is indifference. I teach children not to
care about anything too much, even though they want to make it appear that they
do. How I do this is very subtle. I do it by demanding that they become totally
involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation,
competing vigorously with each other for my favor. It's heartwarming when they
do that; it impresses everyone, even me. When I'm at my best I plan lessons very
carefully in order to produce this show of enthusiasm. But when the bell rings I
insist that they stop whatever it is that we've been working on and proceed
quickly to the next work station. They must turn on and off like a light switch.
Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know
of. Students never have a complete experience except on the installment
plan.

It might help to tell your daughter that the thing with the coins is just a game - the money is just a way of keeping score, it doesn't mean anything, d