There are many things I hate in this world — Axe body spray, zombie spiders, AT&T’s desperate, “Please don’t leave us for Verizon” iPhone campaign — but few I feel as conflicted about as classroom group work.
On one hand, group work sucks. It really sucks. I mean Dyson vacuum-level sucking. You either get put into a group that does no work, terrible work, or the wrong sort of work.
On top of it all, your grade suffers, and there’s nothing you can do about it except scream and run around in circles while cursing at the troublesome group member. Except that seems to be frowned upon the more often you do it.
The best thing you can hope for, supposedly, is getting into a group with your friends, who share the same mindset as you and screw around with them until everything is done.
But you miss something when that happens. Chances are, your friends like you, and if they don’t like you, they are at least nice enough to not tell you how much you suck to your face.
Furthermore, your friends are less likely to challenge your opinions because these are likely people who agree with your opinions, or have heard your thoughts about the Middle East enough times to never want to hear them again.
In this sense, you get along with your friends better because your friends have learned how to avoid your bitchy spurts.
Maybe you’ll be happier working with your friends, but you’re certainly going to learn less in the long run.
That’s why, against my better judgment, I think it’s better when teachers assign groups instead of letting students choose their own groups.
When given a choice, students are likely to befriend students that represent and echo their beliefs, but in a society that already promotes echo-chamber practice, the last refugee for forced interaction with groups outside your social norm is in the classroom.
Just think about it for a second. You choose the restaurants where you want to eat, the places where you hang out, and for the most part, the people you interact with. And this is just in your normal life.
For the left-leaning, MSNBC tells you everything you want to hear, and for the right-leaning, Fox has your back. If you don’t care about politics, there are plenty of channels to placate you as well.
Comedy Central is for the so-called comedy lover, Lifetime for women, TBS for high school drop-outs, and the WB for the radioactive mutants in the sewers.
It’s even worse online. Every website you go to is a website you are OK with. Unless you accidentally stumble onto a different site, the URLs you visit reverberate and correspond with your sense of humor and personal values. If they don’t, you leave the site. Simple.
The world is now set up in such a way that you can find an echo anywhere you’re looking for it. In essence, you never have to be wrong because you can always find a voice telling you are right.
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This practice, accordingly, can lead people to thinking they are always right, which in turn makes them unbearable to be around.
And this is where working in groups with people who suck comes in handy. The stakes are often low, usually just a grade for a class, but important enough where you’ll have to try and work with one another.
Maybe that Republican is actually really good at drawing with pencils, or that leftist is actually a good leader, or maybe that radioactive mutant is even good at expressing human emotions and working in a group (though it will still eat you given half a chance, so watch it).
But more importantly, these people don’t like to or have to spend lots of times with you, which means they care much less about hurting your feelings. They won’t echo your demented viewpoints ad nauseam because, they, unlike you, think you are wrong.
And maybe you are, but you would never know it stuck in the echo chamber.
The point is simple: Classrooms don’t need to be another place to hear your own echoing voice. And if you think they are, stop. Please just stop. You make things unbearable for everyone, and no one likes you, your face, or your shoes. Especially your shoes.
I am losing control again, and I apologize for it.
I have had some of the worst and best learning experiences in groups. I’ve learned how to manage unresponsive and lethargic group members. I’ve learned to work with bossy know-it-alls who know nothing at all. And I’ve met plenty of people that I would have never met otherwise had it not been for the intervening hand of a random teacher’s group assignments.
And I have learned things that I would never learn otherwise. I have learned that I am wrong, which is one of the best, yet most disgusting and painful, lessons a person can learn. Which means I’m right.
