Group Work

For starters, I absolutely hate group work. In my experience there is normally one individual in the group that cares the most and so they do all the work, and then the others reap the benefit off that one person. If that doesn't happen, then either nobody does the work, thinking everyone else will, or the group is so disorganized thus the work never gets done. I know there are good points about group work, but do they outweigh the negative effects of it enough for it to be useful.

For starters, you have to work with people and thus have to deal with many different personalities. This allows you to see what many people are like and a little bit on how to handle them so that it is easier in the future. Also, it gives you communication skills. In a group there is typically some sort of project that has to be developed. In order to do the project, most groups split up the work, thus no one has a really big load and it can get done in time. Also, by splitting it up, you learn how to depend on people that sometimes you normally wouldn't depend on in hopes that they would finish their part. Also, it pushes you and your teammates to do their best so that you wouldn't be considered a slacker and wouldn't be considered stupid. Then when the project is done, most groups have developed friendships with the others in their group thus allowing people to be friends that normally wouldn't even acknowledge each other. These are all good points, and they work in theory. But this never happens in real life (or at least not in my life).

Typically, the group is put together by the teacher or the manager, and sometimes it is random, but more often than not there is a purpose to their ordering. Sometimes the ordering is set so everyone will help each other, but from what I've seen it is typically to put more experienced with less experienced, the smart with the stupid, or the troublemakers with people who will do the work for them so that the troublemakers won't return the next year (this mainly happens in school). With these types of groups you typically get problems with people getting along. The more experienced gets aggravated with the less experienced. The smart has to spend the entire time bringing the stupid up to a point where they understand what is going on and thus never get to what they were supposed to do in the first place. The troublemaker makes that entire group angry and thus they will never agree on anything and will never get anything done. In most of these situations, what ends up happening is the person who cares most that the project gets done will do it themselves, or come out as the leader, delegate everything, but still do it themselves in case the group members forget or don't do it at all.

So, choosing groups in that manner is out. If you put everyone at the same level in the same group, then no one will excel above their level because there is nothing to learn from people who are just like you. Choosing groups at random have the same effects as the other two ways of choosing. That leaves having the groups choose themselves. This too can turn nasty. The cliques will of course try to stay together and so will spend most of their time talking about the current gossip. Once the cliques form all that is left is the loners which are normally the extremes of every type of people: the smart, the stupid, the trouble makers, the shy, the weird, the lazy, the angry at the world, the religious. These people either form a group of their own or are parsed off to the clique-formed groups. Now you have an entire group of people who know each other and one who sticks out like a sore thumb. That sore thumb might be ignored, included, or more often than not teased and made fun of. That does little for their self esteem, and because every group is doing it to their individual misfit, the teacher can't keep an eye on all the groups and so it will continue to happen till something occurs that dramatically changes the current standings. This could be anything from ignoring them, to deciding that life is not worth living. If nothing happens to stop the rest of the group, then the bullies will then think that this is fun and do it again, and when they are never stopped, they begin to think that that is a way of life and it is ok. They come up with some sort of excuse to explain how something like bullying is ok (it builds character, tradition, they deserve it for not being normal, we can't be punished for it). They then live up to that for the rest of their life until something causes them to change. So, now we not only destroyed the life of the misfit, but we now destroyed the integrity of the rest of the group and all other misfits that the group will come in contact with.

So, is group work worth the effort? It teaches good values if it works, but inadvertently teaches bad ones if it doesn't. Personally, I never want to do group work again unless it is a bunch of people like me and it is only being done that way cause there is not enough equipment or to much work for one person. Unfortunately, I know my wish will never come to pass, because, believe it or not, a company is just a large group and so when you go out into the work force, you will just be joining a rather large group with smaller groups integrated into it. According to some, that is why we have group work in school, to prepare us for working out in the world. Well, if that is so, than all it has taught me is no one is to be trusted, the boss hates you, the project doesn't matter anyways, and the majority of your fellow employees would like nothing better than to tease and ridicule you and will do so at every opportunity. To bad this will never change, for it is an endless cycle for everyone because once one group goes bad everyone in that group is corrupted as to how group work should be done, and will thus corrupt everyone else they will ever come in contact with inside or outside of a group.