Cooperative Learning -- Another Tool of the Plutocracy

Whose meds are wearing off, Sibby's or mine?

Years ago, an SDSU friend and I were sitting through another cooperative learning activity in a college class, an activity we knew would require as much time and effort spent on administrating the group tasks as learning the actual course material. Someday, we decided, we would write a book on cooperative learning, titled Saddled with Idiots.

We haven't written that book yet. Thanks to Sibby, maybe we don't have to. Mitchell's busiest blogger wins my whole-hearted agreement this morning with a critique of cooperative learning. Responding to a report in that Sioux Falls paper about the Sioux Falls School District's renewed emphasis on small groups and cooperative learning in the classroom, Sibby offers this Randian comment (Atlas Shrugged, anyone?) from Dr. George C. Leef:

The obvious problem with cooperative learning is that the smarter or more diligent students do most of the work, but must share the credit. To the theorists, this approach to education performs the vital task of informing the bright kids that they have to "share" their talents, and of discouraging them from using their ability to their own benefit [G. C. Leef, "The War Against Excellence," EducationReport.org, 2005.04.11].

Amazingly, Sibby gets through the whole post without mentioning socialism, Marxism, or secular humanism. He does conclude that the Sioux Falls School District's embrace of cooperative learning serves as proof that schools are really just "training grounds for corporations."

Sounds like Sibby's been reading John Taylor Gatto, who makes the argument that corporations and the ruling elites (that would be the plutocracy you and I need to keep our eyes on, Sibby!) want our schools to turn out cookie-cutter kids indoctrinated in groupthink.

It may sound wacky, but on this one, Sibbby, I'm with you a hundred percent. We don't need training in playing nicely with each other. Mom and Dad can handle that. Let schools and students focus on gaining as much academic knowledge as they can handle. Don't hold any kids back with cooperative learning.

Note to My Superiors: Meetings Make Us Dumber!

In a poetry class back at university, my prof decided to be trendy and have us work in groups on a big project. A friend of mine in the class turned to me and rolled his eyes. Both of us had great contempt for group activities. We had individual learning styles; we knew we had always learned best working alone, at our own pace. Whenever our teachers stuck us in groups, our intellectual efforts were constantly compromised by the emotional effort of navigating the artifical social dynamic (and usually, when teachers put kids in groups, they deliberately impose some arrangement that breaks up the natural alignments kids would choose naturally). We couldn't pursue ideas as they occurred to us; we had to wait our turn, address whatever came up on the group's agenda. But given that "cooperative learning" was the big thing on the educational reform radar, teachers in every institution, even at the university level, where profs are more immune to the machinations of the education industry, started throwing their kids into groups to prove what innovative educators they were. My friend and I saw the flaws in cooperative education, and we promised in that poetry class to someday write a book: Saddled with Idiots: Cooperative Learning and the Rule of Mediocrity.

That book hasn't materialized yet, but a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that our complaint against cooperative learning is not just the whining of two smart-alecks in the back of the room. As reported on MSNBC, brainstorming in groups actually produces fewer results than brainstorming individually:

People have a harder time coming up with alternative solutions to a problem when they are part of a group, new research suggests.

Scientists exposed study participants to one brand of soft drink then asked them to think of alternative brands. Alone, they came up with significantly more products than when they were grouped with two others.

The results may bode well for advertisers -- buy ad time during big events like the Super Bowl, and you'll get more impact when your ad plays in front of people watching an event together -- but the study also suggests that the unavoidable groupthink of meetings limits creativity. Researcher H. Shanker Krishnan, marketing prof at Indiana University, says that the discussion that naturally arises in groups crowds out brainstorming for different ideas. He also speaks directly to learning styles. The MSNBC article continues:

Another contributing factor is variation in learning and memory styles. People store and retrieve information in myriad ways, so in a group situation, the conversation could cause individuals to think about the cues differently than they would if they were alone.

Krishnan said individuals, whether students, executives or football fans, should take time to consider the facts on their own before coming to a consensus.

Dr. Krishnan's research squares perfectly with my experience in staff meetings and teacher in-services. I have yet to experience a group activity where I have come away with more knowledge and tools that I can apply to my curriculum and coaching than I can produce working on my own. My most productive in-service days are not those when I am stuck in a group or listening to some self-proclaimed expert, but when I am given those precious opportunities to hunker down in my classroom and work on my own. I'm free then to seek input and collaboration if I choose, if such cooperation presents itself organically in the flow of the work I'm doing, but I'm not hindered by the social dynamics that interfere with my creativity and concentration.

Our in-service speaker back in August told us that if we do anything in our classrooms that's not backed by research, we should be sued for malpractice. Now I have research to show that putting us teachers in groups at in-services dumbs us down. I don't plan to sue, but I will get a copy of this study and keep it handy at school. I hope my school administrators will do the same.

Local Blogs Serve Community in Ways For-Profit Media Can't... or Won't

I've been having a conversation with Randy Schaefer, who is understandably unhappy with the coverage here of the Tax Increment Finance district Madison created for his housing development. Randy can live with my posts; it's the negative and cowardly anonymous comments that raise his hackles.

Local blogs can raise hackles... but on the whole, that's a good thing, especially in era when we see the mainstream media retreating from its duty to serve the public. The New York Times itself points to the rising importance of new media. While maintaining its disdain for most of us ("an Internet landscape long dominated by partisan commentary, gossip, vitriol and citizen journalism posted by unpaid amateurs"), the Gray Lady speaks approvingly of professional journalists who have set up their own non-profit shops in places like San Diego to dig into local politics, bring questionable policies and expenditures to light, and drive further media coverage by the mainstream journalists.

Other cites rallying professional and citizen journalists to do this kind of local coverage abound:

• MinnPost.com in Minneapolis
• New Haven Independent in Connecticut
• Chi-Town Daily News in Chicago
• West Seattle Blog

These local news websites all operate in markets where there are plenty of newspapers and radio and TV stations. Yet the movers and shakers behind those news sites look around and see important issues going unmentioned, or undermentioned.

That's what I'd like to think blogs like the Madville Times can do. Madison's lucky to have its own newspaper and radio station, but even MDL and KJAM don't catch every issue (and neither do I!). They certainly don't air every voice—anyone care to guess how many letters to the editor Jon Hunter has rejected in the pasy year?

Even in our small market, there is a place for more voices, more folks speaking up and investigating how their city and county and other organizations spend tax dollars. I do a little bit of that. Sometimes, so do my commenters (good work, John!). Think of it as collaborative community journalism: I start a story by mentioning a few facts and asking some questions, and readers then build the story by contributing their observations, giving context, pointing out errors in my own statements and others' comments.

This is going to sound crazy coming from someone who hates cooperative learning... but that's how journalism can work now. We can use the Internet to work together, to collaborate in telling the stories that are important to our community... and in keeping an eye on the powers that be.

Randy and the New York Times are right: this medium—not just the Madville Times, but the whole darn Internet, where any honyocker can start a blog—does facilitate negative, envious, unsubstantiated name-calling and other irrelevant baloney from chicken-hearted wimps who lack the courage to face us, their neighbors, and back their words with their names (and a fact or two). But this medium doesn't create that negativity: it exposes ill will and flawed thinking that are already there in the community. In a way the for-profit media can't or won't, this medium draws out the ills in our community, whether they include the errors and occasional chicanery of public officials or simply the ill-founded suspicions, jealousies, and prejudices of the people we live with. Drawing out those ills allows us to challenge and maybe even fix them. And that's a net plus for any community.

The Madville Times continues. So do the comments. Keep up the conversation!

Catangui Dismissal Raises Academic Freedom Questions

I continue to read up on the science and politics surrounding the contested dismissal of entomologist Dr. Mike Catangui from South Dakota State University.

Catangui's predecessor at the Cooperative Extension Service, Professor Emeritus Ben Kantack, says SDSU gave Catangui the boot for refusing to advocate soybean-aphid-spraying guidelines from other states for South Dakota. Catangui's research indicates that following different spraying guidelines in South Dakota will increase South Dakota farmers' yields and income.

Kantack says Catangui's dismissal violates academic freedom. Readers may wish to review the statement on academic freedom in the collective bargaining agreement our profs sign:

The parties to this agreement recognize and accept the importance of academic freedom to teaching and learning. Academic freedom includes the right to study, discuss, investigate, teach and publish. Academic freedom applies to both teaching and research. Freedom in research is fundamental to the advancement of truth. Academic freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of students to freedom in learning. It includes the freedom to perform one's professional duties and to present differing and sometimes controversial points of view, free from reprisal. The faculty unit member is entitled to freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the performing of other assigned academic duties [2008-2011 South Dakota University Faculty Collective Bargaining Agreement, 14.1.1].

This academic freedom statement makes it pretty clear that SDSU can't fire a professor for publishing and discussing the results of his or her research. But I wonder: does work in the field for the Extension Service fall under "other assigned academic duties"? Is there some clause that excludes those public outreach activities from the academic freedom clause?

Worth noting: SDSU Extension entomologist Kelley Tilmon quite firmly advocates the 250-threshold and regional aphid guidelines in this July 27 Extension Service article. Tilmon and Catangui have disagreed on aphid recommendations previously and publicly. Catangui has recommended treatment at one to five aphids per plant, a threshold challenged by other researchers. Some questions about Cantangui's research center on caging soybeans, which prevents beneficial insects from helping control aphids. But cage studies are used regularly in entomology, and subsequent field research seems to show better yields under the lower aphid thresholds.

Scientists have honest disagreements. They deal with complicated questions like when to spray soybeans for aphids—at least it seems complicated to me, what with a range of variables like soybean growth stage, yield potential, spraying cost, soybean market value to consider. They come up with different answers. That's why we have academic freedom: to protect professors' right to challenge the prevailing wisdom when their research (not to mention their conscience) says a challenge is warranted.

(Hmm... Dr. Blanchard, care to offer a turn on this topic on climate change?)

Meanwhile, outside the halls of academia, what are you farmers up to? Are you spraying for aphids? Do you follow the Extension guidelines? Are they working in South Dakota?