The Red/Black Game
This is an exercise to try on your students to demonstrate that not all
situations are best done in a competetive way.
Divide your class into three (or, possibly, more) teams. The purpose of the
game is to
score as many points as possible. On each turn, each group decides whether
choose red or black and writes that on a sheet of paper. Scoring is as follows:
- If all choose black, each team scores 50.
- If exactly one team chooses red, that team scores 100 and all other teams
score 0.
- If more than one team chooses red, all teams score 0.
Play about 5 or 6 rounds. What you should usually find is that at least one
group will
start using red almost immediately and others will join in so that by the end
of the game, NO team will have as many points as they would have if everyone
had "cooperated" and chosen black at each turn. You can also point out that
you said "score as many points as possible" NOT "your team should score as
many points as possible" - again emphasizing that the larger score by the whole
group was a positive gain.
lziegler@csbsju.edu