Group projects are collectivist indoctrination, sez Mises

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2004-12-19 02:37am

A 2001 article

Groupthink and You
by Karen De Coster and Brad Edmonds

[Posted August 29, 2001]

You see it in daycare centers, and you see it in the public schools, from kindergarten to high school. Group projects abound, shoving together individuals who have no formal bonds, yet are banded together for the purpose of collective decision-making.

Universities, both public and private, are not immune to this affliction. In fact, if you attend a business college today, you’ll think it’s the newest rage, but it’s been the rule for decades.

Most university programs may not use group projects, but undergraduate and graduate programs in business are full of them. It is our contention that group projects are criminal in themselves and should be abolished on moral grounds, in that they function as collectivist indoctrination. Like government schools, group projects homogenize thought and neuter high achievers.

Individuality is forced out of our kids at an early age. After all, group projects are often the standard for young children in childcare situations, where the young ones are often taught that individuals don't do things or go places, groups do. By college age, the collective cast of mind has only gotten more oppressive. Groupthink is a process of gradualism that seeks to gently merge the followers into a pack with leaders, the hope being that the leaders will pull up those who typically reside on the low end of the motivation and achievement scale.

For example, a professor assigns an innocuous academic exercise, such as a term paper, communications presentation, or marketing proposal. It is turned into a group project by fiat—the professor segments the class into groups. More often than not, these groups are not even voluntary. When the students turn in their papers, the professor usually assigns the same grade to everyone in the group.

Another common stratagem in this setting is to have group members grade one another and develop useful constructive criticism for fellow teammates. However, this commonly dovetails into grades by mutual agreement. If one member doesn't go along with this forced "agreement" by granting the agreed-upon concessions, he is usually excoriated by his fellow groupthinkers for doing so. This is a pact where honest evaluations take a back seat to easy A's and phony feel-goodism.

Shirking is the most immediate danger within group projects. Usually, the group members with some semblance of a work ethic labor hard and often to take up the slack from the free riders. There are other dangers as well. In a case experienced by one of us, for example, a group member simply cut and pasted text from the Web instead of writing up his share of the research. Thus, the final version of the paper given to the professor was 20 percent pure plagiarism, unbeknownst to the rest of the group until it was too late. The slacker got a grade of 98 for the project, as did the people who actually worked.

In other cases, the shirking of duties simply cannot be overcome. High achievers are forced to relax their standards and accept being reduced to the lowest common denominator in the group. This can have a dreadful effect on work ethic and attitudes through the following insidious lessons instilled by group projects:

Lesson 1: You will learn cooperation, not competition.

Lesson 2: The achiever will be taxed: The reward of his efforts will go to others, so the low achiever who exerts little effort and contributes almost nothing will be taken care of by the professor (serving as the government).

Lesson 3: Individualism will not be allowed. The individual with the best ideas will do what the group decides. If you have an original or daring thought, forget it. The group will write up a bland sack of platitudes that represents the thinking of its lowest common denominator.

Lesson 4: Conservatism and caution are the name of the game. Whereas high achievers constantly strive to better themselves and have the room to operate in a more daring realm, the low achievers want things quickly and easily as they conform to less strict standards for excellence. The result is likely to be one of mediocrity.

Lesson 5: Get used to the emotional feel of a collectivist, totalitarian state. If you are an individualist with a work ethic and a drive to excel, you will be pounded down until you adopt the debilitating, depressing learned helplessness that socialism produces. If you are a slacker, however, a free rider with no qualms about living on the purloined toil of honest people, you can feel relieved, satisfied, secure; if you are a thoroughgoing scumbag, you can even feel pride in any good grade given you on the backs of your teammates.

Business programs, in forcing group settings upon (previously) ambitious students, are responding to the demands of the business community. This can be dangerous.

First, the business community isn’t always the only entity to ask for the secrets of success. Successful businessmen such as Ted Turner and Warren Buffett have proven they don’t understand well what makes success possible. They know how to make money in ignorance of the economic principles that make it possible. This is due in part to the fact that most tycoons have navigated an ocean of government regulations in making their fortunes, and they mistakenly conclude that the government therefore had something to do with their success.

Second, and more ominous, business schools are usually the only programs on campus employing any right-wing (if mildly so) professors. Having the only campus department that makes extensive, mandatory use of group projects, business programs subject and desensitize their hapless students to the most realistically socialist experience available at most universities. Administrators are probably comfortable in the knowledge that the group project experience more than compensates for professors who occasionally dare to admit publicly that market solutions are better than government dictates. And students aren’t the only ones ruined: after enough years of being commissars, professors may slowly convert to the leftist mentality as well.

In truth, groupthink has become a chronic problem in universities; it is a consensus-seeking process that does not allow for the preservation of individuality. It stifles creativity for the purpose of compromise and agreement. The university—through its group-project mentality—has become a test lab for socialization skills. The fostering of such rigid cooperation and coerced integration can be had only at the expense of lesser accomplishment.

Ayn Rand had it right when she said that any collectivist system is necessarily self-defeating no matter what its specific policies or leaders. After all, if Johnny is in your group and he can't read or write very well, you'll be getting Johnny's grades.

This reminds me of that nutbag bitch known as Thatcher, who said there is no such thing as society.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2004-12-19 02:41am

Group projects are pretty much shit though. For a real approximation of "working in a team" - the excuse by which it is justified (which is in the work place and highly heirarchal, unlike that feel-good group shit) get a job when you're young.

Butterbean569 · Post by **Butterbean569** » 2004-12-19 03:36am

Just about every "group project" I've been apart of went like this:

Me: "Hey guys, this project shouldn't be too hard. We have a week to do it, and 4 of us here. I'll go ahead and get the research done tonight, and when we meet tomorrow we can plan out the rest of the project"

Everyone else: "Oh ya Ben that's great, we'll get a good grade on this."

The next day

Me: "Alright guys, here's some key notes that I took, as well as 20 pages of printed and copied documents that we can use. It took me two and a half hours last night in the library, but now most of the work is done."

Everyone else: "Great job Ben! We're glad we didn't have to do that boring work!"

Me: "Alright, how about we split up the jobs now."

*Split up jobs*

Me: "Sounds good, we'll meet Monday night so we can all get on the same page and get things ready for the presentation on Wednesday"

Everyone else: "Awesome! We're gonna kick ass!"

Sunday night, reading through my email....

The fat kid in the group: "Hey Ben, I'm not going to be able to come to the meeting tomorrow. I have to eat lots of cheezy poofs, so I'll be too busy to work. But here's the powerpoint I threw together in 10 minutes for you. I know it sucks ass, but hey, what can I say? Cya on Wednesday!"

The hot girl in the group: "Hey Ben, I'm not going to be able to come to the meeting tomorrow. I'm going to be having lots of loud, hot sex with random guys. I know you were hoping that we'd be able to hook up while "working on our presentation", but that'll never happen! I was supposed to do the powerpoint, right? Or was that the fat kid's job? Oh well, here's a worthless powerpoint that I threw together in about 10 minutes last night, in-between the two trains that were being run on me by the Purdue Football team. Cya on Wednesday!"

The artsy girl in the group: "Hey Ben, I'm not going to be able to come to the meeting tomorrow. I have this *huge* portfolio that's due for my Art Appreciation 101 class tomorrow, and I really have to get started on it! I know that my art class is only one credit-hour, I've had the entire semester to do this project, and I don't have any other people's grade depending on me, but oh well! Anyway, I've sent the attachment of the powerpoint you wanted me to do. It has pretty flowers for the borders! Cya on Wednesday!"

Me: "God Fucking Dammit".

Wednesday morning

Me: "...and that's why we believe that nuclear power is a safe, economic way to generate electricty in our country".

Teacher: "That presentation wasn't very good. I would expect that kind of work out of one person, but you guys really needed to do better with 4 people working on this project. I'll give you guys a C-".

Group members: "Awesome! We did it! Great job everyone, awesome grade!"

Me: "Fuck me in the ass...there goes my GPA".

Perhaps a bit exaggurated....but unfortunatly that's a somewhat realistic scenario of what I've been through....lol

What's the point of this? Group projects, especially in high school and lower-level college courses, are FUCKING BULLSHIT! I had one course this semester that was pretty tough, and everyone in there was pretty mature and hard-working. During a group project, everyone pulled their weight. It was a-fucking-mazing...I couldn't believe it. 99% of the time, though, these group projects just end up with one or two people doing all the work, while the rest play with themselves. If done right, group projects can turn out very well. The result really is greater than the sum of the parts. This rarely happens, though....

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-12-19 04:27am

Group projects work fine when they approximate the environment in which you might be in one. For example, a group of engineering students doing a group project which is similar to what a group of actual engineers might do. But when you throw together a bunch of people who are on no particular career path and who have wildly disparate skill levels and expect them to function as a group, you're asking for chaos.

Nevertheless, the original article was obviously written while either drugged or just plain stupid since birth.

Peregrin Toker · Post by **Peregrin Toker** » 2004-12-19 04:56am

Being in high school myself, I have found that group projects work best when:

1) The group consists of no more than three people. When 4 or more work together on a project, it usually ends up rather unfocused.

2) The students can decide for themselves who they will cooperate with. (that way, mismatched groups are less likely to form)

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2004-12-19 05:31am

Group projects in public education are fucking devices of torture for anyone who shows the slightest glimmer of being an above-average student. Surprise! Now you get to be assigned to a team comprised entirely of underachievers! Have fun dragging them up for us!

(no, I don't have any suppressed rage over this, I just happen to enjoy punching things until my fists are covered in blood...)

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2004-12-19 05:54am

It was like that for me until high school. By tenth grade, all the smart kids sat together which meant that everyone carried their weight in lab work.

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2004-12-19 06:35am

Argh, that's something that turned me off debating sooo much.
Me: Okay, so does anyone want to be First Speaker?
Retard 1: No.
Retard 2: No.
Retard 3: Thursday.
Me: Dear god.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2004-12-19 09:45am

Darth Wong wrote:Group projects work fine when they approximate the environment in which you might be in one. For example, a group of engineering students doing a group project which is similar to what a group of actual engineers might do. But when you throw together a bunch of people who are on no particular career path and who have wildly disparate skill levels and expect them to function as a group, you're asking for chaos.

Group projects suck horrible. I've yet to experiance one which hasnt been torture.

The worst is when you get assigned a group project when the class hasnt even covered the material you need todo the work.

Nevertheless, the original article was obviously written while either drugged or just plain stupid since birth.

It was a little extreme.

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2004-12-19 10:32am

Peregrin Toker wrote:Being in high school myself, I have found that group projects work best when:

1) The group consists of no more than three people. When 4 or more work together on a project, it usually ends up rather unfocused.

2) The students can decide for themselves who they will cooperate with. (that way, mismatched groups are less likely to form)

I've found that in high school, sometimes one has to be careful with allowing students a lot of wiggle-room to decide their own groups. Otherwise you have one of three things happen:

A) A wonderfully matched team of motivated, dedicated students get together, and they kick much ass. They also sit around the campfire, holding hands and singing kumbay-fucking-ya.

B) You have a team of students get together, each understanding their own strengths and weaknesses. Usually this works out well, but sometimes you have a particularly charasmatic manager-type who doesn't seem to do anything important, except for the fact they know how to gather people around them to compensate for their weaknesses. You see a lot of this in college too.

C) You have the mindless brain-vampires seek out the nerdiest, most intelligent and most socially awkward kid in the class and foist all the work off on him or her because they know their victim will do the work without complaint. Death march ensues.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-12-19 10:49am

Group projects became a lot less loathsome once I learned to say, "If you assholes don't start carrying your weight, I'll do the whole thing myself and only put my name on it." I learned that trick in high school biology. I had a lab "partner" who was letting me do all the actual experimenting, PLUS gathering the equipment, cleaning up after, etc. I finally said to him, "If you don't want to help, you can do your own write up. Now go get me a microscope."

Ryoga · Post by **Ryoga** » 2004-12-19 11:21am

I'll admit that sometimes group-work sucks, especially if you're the Smart Kid(Tm), it has it's moments.

Sure, I did most of the work on the labs in AP Physics...but it wasn't my idea to drop things off of the roof when we had to a project demonstrating physical principles (momentum, in this case).

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2004-12-19 11:48am

God god... that is the story of my life.

I have done a good group assignment ONCE. And that was while working with Shark Bait on a presentation on Mollusks for AP bio. We communicated over AIM and phone, we both did the research, collaborating over AIM, we got so much informtion, we went over our alloted time. It was great.

The rest of them sucked ass.

I had one in ENG 101 this semester... Jesus christ I hated that class... I was a presentation on a hippie indoctrination(Basically how everything on our lives is caused by the american obsession with the american west... yeah, we were expected to believe this shit) article in our books.

We had four people. I created the entire powerpoint slide show. I was sent a small blurp of text by each of the other students which I only incorporated into a larger slide because it sucked so much ass. Then, when the requirements were met(and an A was assured) I spent the balance of my alloted time ripping the article to tiny bits with sociobiology and actual economics(The critical analysis was the art I was actually assigned, and I went all out).

It sucked ass

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2004-12-19 11:58am

Yeargh, I have tonnes of these types of stories to tell. Most of them are virtually identical, of course.

Me: Okay, so Bill's doing the Assyrians...
Bill: Ass! Ha!
Me: Thank you, Bill. I'm sure you'll turn out to have a spark of intelligence when the time comes.

------------------Later------------------
Teach: Now please welcome Bill, the 3th speaker.
Bill: I like cheese.
/Me shoots Bill

kheegster · Post by **kheegster** » 2004-12-19 12:25pm

I'm surprised that the article talked only about group projects in business school. We have group projects in my physics degree course, and most of the people I know of doing other subjects have group projects as well.

However, I've figured out on my own most of the points covered in the article, so I've managed to weedle my way out of the group project by doing an individual research project instead. Being top student has its perks.

Boyish-Tigerlilly · Post by **Boyish-Tigerlilly** » 2004-12-19 02:46pm

Perhaps a bit exaggurated....but unfortunatly that's a somewhat realistic scenario of what I've been through....lol

Vat groop! Zu are ze groop!

Anyway. That doesn't even sound like an exaggeration. That's exactly like all my projects that are in groups go. No one does anything, and one person is always the one who with the shit job of making it all work. Half the people don't do anything, don't talk, or just don't show up.

You can't trust other people. A group of one has always worked better in my experience. Not in real life, but in college it does.

I Like collectivism, if people are actually motivated. People shoudl get individual grades based on effort, not one grade-fits-all.

kheegster · Post by **kheegster** » 2004-12-19 05:31pm

I think one crucial element from real-life working groups that aren't replicated in university group projects is that in real life, you can fire the slackers.

Kazuaki Shimazaki · Post by **Kazuaki Shimazaki** » 2004-12-19 08:20pm

Well, I don't know. I had group projects where there were at least some semblance of work-splitting. I also had ones where my weaknesses meant I had to attach myself like a clam to people who knew what they are doing - I tried, but what can you do when you can barely draw or handle calculus and the entire project for some reason is about drawing and calculus? Basically, in group work, I tend to stuff all the art portions to others, and leave the text parts to myself. So if it is mostly a text work (like an essay), I'd do most of the gruntwork, and if it is artwork (like a big beautiful poster), vice versa.

Then I had those where I lead. It is not that the others didn't have work ethic, I guess. It is just that some of them are English as a Second Language people who don't have enough English to ask for a pencil, and our presentation is to be done in English.

So I do about 90% of the gruntwork, see what 10% I can give them (in those cases, it'd mostly involve decoration). On presentation day, I get them in a huddle, and basically give them the simplest script that would still make them a part, and tell them to read from it no matter what and to let me do most of the talking no matter what. You know, like conscripts, I guess.

Korvan · Post by **Korvan** » 2004-12-20 03:27pm

I was the integrator of a comp sci project back in university, which means I would put together all of the modules that the rest of the team had written. I had asked for all of the modules to be delivered fully tested and I would then work out any bugs caused by interactions of the modules.

Well, apparently most of my team thought that fully tested meant compiles without errors and left it at that. Hardly anything did what it was supposed to do and I spent all night getting the damn thing to function at all.

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2004-12-20 04:09pm

I never worked very well in groups, because I was typically the most competent person in it, especially at the three key skills of group projects--reading, writing, and bullshitting--and I was never good at the fourth skill, which is concealing your contempt for other people. Of course, when I was lumped with dumb people they usually got lucky, because my response was usually "I'm not letting you 'tards slow me down!" but I was also too nice to ever fuck them over by leaving their names off of it.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2004-12-20 04:14pm

Looking at that article, all I could see were the huge False Cause and False Analogy fallacies littered all over every paragraph. Not to mention that the conclusions it reaches are ludicrous. Modern business, industry, and technological development are team efforts by necessity. Learning cooperation is not only essential to be able to exist comfortably in society, but also to make one an employable asset.

I mean, seriously: do the authours actually expect that any enterprise in the modern world can function with each and every person exclusively pursuing their own interests and goals irrespective of the needs of the particular enterprise? How about a ship's crew? Or a baseball team? How long would any of these last if the persons making up the group simply pursued their own goals at the expense of the other members to be the first to "achieve"? Achieve what? Ted Williams, at the beginning of his career in the bigs, set himself toward the goal of becoming the best hitter in baseball. But his monomaniacal obsession with this goal in 1940 also resulted in his being a poor outfielder because he'd be concentrating far more on his hitting drills than the game he was supposed to be playing. Furthermore, a "slugger" will tend to concentrate on getting the Big Hit where a single or even a sacrifice might advance scoring opportunities, and strike- or fly-out nearly eight times out of ten at the plate. That is where putting one's own achievement at the expense of the team not only robs the team but also the individual player; he's shooting for the wrong goal and crippling the overall effort of the team to reach its goal —which in baseball is to get to the World Series. It isn't even necessary to state why the principle of individual competition instead of group cooperation would be totally disasterous towards the successful prosecution of far more serious endeavours such as a space programme or a war.

Karen De Coster and Brad Edmonds evidently don't understand how anything in the real world actually works, and that modern capitalism as well as more serious technological and military endeavours depend far more upon group cooperation than individual competition than they care to recognise.

But then, what else could you expect from a pair of babbling Randroids?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-12-20 04:20pm

I do so like the way Randroids will take a premise such as "collectivism is always bad" and then write long diatribes which do nothing but apply this premise to a particular scenario in order to conclude that collectivism is always bad. Not circular at all

Guardsman Bass · Post by **Guardsman Bass** » 2004-12-20 04:39pm

Although the projects have usually been ridiculous, groups of two never seemed to have problems with me; my partners were almost always highly competent.

And, in my case, the charismatic manager guys usually proved the most useful, once you got to them the importance of the project. It was the Talking jokers that slowed everything down; the moronical guys who did no work and instead spent the time blabbering and making jokes.

sketerpot · Post by **sketerpot** » 2004-12-20 07:43pm

Guardsman Bass wrote:Although the projects have usually been ridiculous, groups of two never seemed to have problems with me; my partners were almost always highly competent.

In that case, your experience was very different from mine. Keep that in mind as you read the rest of my post.

And, in my case, the charismatic manager guys usually proved the most useful, once you got to them the importance of the project. It was the Talking jokers that slowed everything down; the moronical guys who did no work and instead spent the time blabbering and making jokes.

In all the group assignments I've had to do, I can deal with the talking jokers. Since it usually would have been slower to get their input than do the work myself, I didn't mind them. The thing I could not stand, though, was the people who are good at taking control of a group and nothing else. A project led by one such person ends up a deathmarch to failure. On one project like that, where our group had to make a pasta tower, the most worthwhile contribution (adding rigidity and strength with a certain type of glue) had to be made secretly---and I got chewed out afterward, even though the change made the tower twice as strong.

I much prefer groups where I can easily sieze the reins myself. When I do, the work generally gets done well enough to get an A (and I usually end up doing most of it). And I'm not bragging about my (lackluster) organizational skills---it just makes a huge difference that nobody else screws me over.

President Sharky · Post by **President Sharky** » 2004-12-20 09:04pm

I am the super-smart, socially-inept, and awkward kid at school, so I'm a frequent target of slackers and asstards who want to boost their grades. Luckily, I also have the advantage of being very tall and intimidating, and as such I can tell the asstards to fuck off with no fear. Also, when a group refuses to work, I can easily motivate them using the Tarkin Doctrine

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Group projects are collectivist indoctrination, sez Mises

Group projects are collectivist indoctrination, sez Mises

Well....