6 ms·

Ken Robinson on collaboration in education: "In the work world, collaboration and team work are essential to success; in school, it's called cheating." More h

by zdean 10y ago

Ken Robinson on collaboration in education: "In the work world, collaboration and team work are essential to success; in school, it's called cheating." More here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

threatofrain 10y ago
Well what a lot of children do in school is indeed cheating outside of collaboration. It's often one person who's already done doing the work of another without much bidirectional creative synthesis. I would think that students who collaborate on schoolwork or studying are very institutionally fluent and aren't really at risk of the institution stepping over them and calling them cheaters. I see the college cheating industry as a trade between wealthier cooler kids and the smarter disadvantaged kids, which I suppose is also life in most places, China or US.
- nol13 10y ago
  What a lot of adults do at work is also indeed cheating outside of collaboration.
- jmcdiesel 10y ago
  Well, cheating is only to be expected in a system that puts a score/grade on the pedestal. The point of school (American school, at least) isnt to learn, its to get a good grade. When the goal is a number, than 'cheating' is simply trying to achieve the goal. If the goal was to actually learn, the "cheating" that you see in schools would become "collaboration" - much like in a workplace with quotas and ridiculous metrics, people will cheat the system - in a workplace who values output quality first, you end up with collaboration between employees to reach that goal... The problem is - 90% of us went through the school indoctrination of "the grade is the goal" ... and carry a lot of that mentality out into the work force.. and at worse, many of them start companies and align their business goals for their employees with that same standard..
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    The education system boils down to attempting to certify that someone knows what they claim to know. This so that said someone can be slotted into place in the company production line.
    - jmcdiesel 10y ago
      Yep. Education isnt the goal, menial job placement is. Its cynical, but also true, that an educated populous would grind America to a halt, because we're reliant on people doing a lot of menial jobs... and educated people dont do those jobs...
      - admax88q 10y ago
        > Education isnt the goal, menial job placement is. I disagree. Plenty of times through school I heard complaints of "When will I need this in the real world!" and numerous comments online complaining about education (particularly arts and social science curricula in university) not preparing people for jobs. Plenty of things I learned in primary school, high school and in my Engineering degree are not applicable to my day job but did make me a more educated person. It's funny to witness the education system get simultaneously criticised for not preparing people for the workforce and also only preparing people for the workforce.
        jmcdiesel 10y ago
        "Plenty of times through school I heard complaints of "When will I need this in the real world!" and numerous comments online complaining about education (particularly arts and social science curricula in university) not preparing people for jobs." Both of these are correct - and they corroborate my point. The skills taught, they don't prepare you for a real world job - they teach you to stay in line, as few questions, and do what you're told. Thats what you need to be tought to work in a factory or plow a field... or stand behind a cash register. They don't prepare you for "good" jobs... they prepare you for menial jobs. If everyone came out of high school with real knowledge and real skills, nobody would run the cash register at the gas station for minimum wage...
shuntress 10y ago
Collaboration is great for learning something new as a group. But how do you then assess whether each individual in the group learned that important concept, or if they just all agreed with the one (and only) student who actually learned/knew it?
- zdean 10y ago
  It probably requires a shift in what we think of as assessment. Montessori has some ideas: http://montessoriguide.org/assessment/ http://montessoriguide.org/assessment/ Seems to produce good results: http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/05/the-montessori-mafia/ http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/05/the-montessori-...
- npiazza83 10y ago
  Furthermore, how do we ascertain whether or not group work is just "outsourcing" for teachers and the students that learned the concept aren't simply k-12 unpaid TAs who find their role as "assistant professor" pretty tedious thus turning off the best and brightest from a lifetime of enriching educational experiences?
  - thegayngler 10y ago
    Actually you can learn a lot from teaching others or helping others learn the material. When you have to teach someone else something you learn what you don't actually know that well.
- conanbatt 10y ago
  What would be the point of assessing an isolated individual in a world of collaboration? Its akin to evaluating how someone would do something in the middle of the jungle without tools or support. Sure, you will be able to know who does better in that setting, but what conclusion can you bring of that?
  - mcguire 10y ago
    It's gonna kinda suck to be the engineering team where nobody actually learned calculus. Or the surgical team where everyone "collaborated" on basic anatomy.
digi_owl 10y ago
Until you get slapped with a parent or copyright lawsuit...
wfo 10y ago
"In school, taking credit for someone else's work that you had nothing to do with creating is unethical, not accepted, and punished severely. In the work world, it's called Tuesday." --Anyone who's experienced it Cheating and collaboration are not the same. If you've ever taken an advanced math/cs/STEM class you've collaborated often on problem sets, they are often too hard to do alone. But you shouldn't have cheated.
4h53n 10y ago
I remember having a cheating rig at high school. We were 4-5 classmates, who would always sit close and hangout. Each of us would study the classes we best at. For example I really sucked at English and math, but was really good at physics and biology, one guy was good at English and another one at Turkish literature, another at history, another at Math. Overall high school was really easy for us. It's not like we didn't cheat at exams, we also helped each other before the exams. Teachers tried to separate the group several times but we were smart and doing well, so they chose to ignore at some point. All members went to uni, studied STEM. Now, I'm well aware that studying things you can already do is not the best way but this was what happened.
atdaemon 10y ago
Sir Kenneth Robinson! :-)

by zdean 10y ago

threatofrain 10y ago

Well what a lot of children do in school is indeed cheating outside of collaboration. It's often one person who's already done doing the work of another without much bidirectional creative synthesis. I would think that students who collaborate on schoolwork or studying are very institutionally fluent and aren't really at risk of the institution stepping over them and calling them cheaters. I see the college cheating industry as a trade between wealthier cooler kids and the smarter disadvantaged kids, which I suppose is also life in most places, China or US.

nol13 10y ago
What a lot of adults do at work is also indeed cheating outside of collaboration.
jmcdiesel 10y ago
Well, cheating is only to be expected in a system that puts a score/grade on the pedestal. The point of school (American school, at least) isnt to learn, its to get a good grade. When the goal is a number, than 'cheating' is simply trying to achieve the goal. If the goal was to actually learn, the "cheating" that you see in schools would become "collaboration" - much like in a workplace with quotas and ridiculous metrics, people will cheat the system - in a workplace who values output quality first, you end up with collaboration between employees to reach that goal... The problem is - 90% of us went through the school indoctrination of "the grade is the goal" ... and carry a lot of that mentality out into the work force.. and at worse, many of them start companies and align their business goals for their employees with that same standard..
- digi_owl 10y ago
  The education system boils down to attempting to certify that someone knows what they claim to know. This so that said someone can be slotted into place in the company production line.
  - jmcdiesel 10y ago
    Yep. Education isnt the goal, menial job placement is. Its cynical, but also true, that an educated populous would grind America to a halt, because we're reliant on people doing a lot of menial jobs... and educated people dont do those jobs...
    - admax88q 10y ago
      > Education isnt the goal, menial job placement is. I disagree. Plenty of times through school I heard complaints of "When will I need this in the real world!" and numerous comments online complaining about education (particularly arts and social science curricula in university) not preparing people for jobs. Plenty of things I learned in primary school, high school and in my Engineering degree are not applicable to my day job but did make me a more educated person. It's funny to witness the education system get simultaneously criticised for not preparing people for the workforce and also only preparing people for the workforce.
      - jmcdiesel 10y ago
        "Plenty of times through school I heard complaints of "When will I need this in the real world!" and numerous comments online complaining about education (particularly arts and social science curricula in university) not preparing people for jobs." Both of these are correct - and they corroborate my point. The skills taught, they don't prepare you for a real world job - they teach you to stay in line, as few questions, and do what you're told. Thats what you need to be tought to work in a factory or plow a field... or stand behind a cash register. They don't prepare you for "good" jobs... they prepare you for menial jobs. If everyone came out of high school with real knowledge and real skills, nobody would run the cash register at the gas station for minimum wage...

shuntress 10y ago

Collaboration is great for learning something new as a group. But how do you then assess whether each individual in the group learned that important concept, or if they just all agreed with the one (and only) student who actually learned/knew it?

zdean 10y ago
It probably requires a shift in what we think of as assessment. Montessori has some ideas: http://montessoriguide.org/assessment/ http://montessoriguide.org/assessment/ Seems to produce good results: http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/05/the-montessori-mafia/ http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/05/the-montessori-...
npiazza83 10y ago
Furthermore, how do we ascertain whether or not group work is just "outsourcing" for teachers and the students that learned the concept aren't simply k-12 unpaid TAs who find their role as "assistant professor" pretty tedious thus turning off the best and brightest from a lifetime of enriching educational experiences?
- thegayngler 10y ago
  Actually you can learn a lot from teaching others or helping others learn the material. When you have to teach someone else something you learn what you don't actually know that well.
conanbatt 10y ago
What would be the point of assessing an isolated individual in a world of collaboration? Its akin to evaluating how someone would do something in the middle of the jungle without tools or support. Sure, you will be able to know who does better in that setting, but what conclusion can you bring of that?
- mcguire 10y ago
  It's gonna kinda suck to be the engineering team where nobody actually learned calculus. Or the surgical team where everyone "collaborated" on basic anatomy.

digi_owl 10y ago

Until you get slapped with a parent or copyright lawsuit...

wfo 10y ago

"In school, taking credit for someone else's work that you had nothing to do with creating is unethical, not accepted, and punished severely. In the work world, it's called Tuesday." --Anyone who's experienced it Cheating and collaboration are not the same. If you've ever taken an advanced math/cs/STEM class you've collaborated often on problem sets, they are often too hard to do alone. But you shouldn't have cheated.

4h53n 10y ago

I remember having a cheating rig at high school. We were 4-5 classmates, who would always sit close and hangout. Each of us would study the classes we best at. For example I really sucked at English and math, but was really good at physics and biology, one guy was good at English and another one at Turkish literature, another at history, another at Math. Overall high school was really easy for us. It's not like we didn't cheat at exams, we also helped each other before the exams. Teachers tried to separate the group several times but we were smart and doing well, so they chose to ignore at some point. All members went to uni, studied STEM. Now, I'm well aware that studying things you can already do is not the best way but this was what happened.

atdaemon 10y ago

Sir Kenneth Robinson! :-)