Divide into small groups to work on the problem
Remember when you were in grammar school and the teacher would break the class into small groups of 3-6 students and each group had to complete a task? You'd get stuck with these other kids and work together to solve a problem of some sort. Of course, this didn't always work so smoothly as you had different kids in the class. In fact, you'd likely get put into one of four kinds of groups:
- The Go Getters - this group had one or more A students (or all overachievers) who would work like gangbusters to provide the best, clearest, shiniest, most "A"-worthy output possible.
- Average Kids - This group was made up up your average kids. B students who worked hard but weren't overachievers. They would work to get the right answers but wouldn't overdo it.
- AD(H)D Group - This had one or more class clowns in it. These kids would rather fuck off than do the assignment, usually because they had the attention spans of protozoa.
- Jerks Inc. - This group had one or more kids with a chip on his/her shoulder and would actively sabotage the efforts of the group, for whatever reason.
Now, if you were in The Go Getters you had a great shot at an A. The Average Kids usually netted an A or B, and came out all right. If you were in the AD(H)D Group you had a decent shot at a B provided you could either get the clowns to help a bit or did the work in spite of them. If you were unlucky enough to be a member of Jerks Inc. you were lucky to get a D, provided you could get the assignment done at all (in which case you'd end up with an incomplete if you were lucky). In fact, if you were in Jerks Inc. you would be best served by getting the asshole(s) booted from the group and work on the assignment either alone or with the one or two kids who weren't trying to actively sabotage your efforts.
I have served proudly in all four groups (most often The Average Kids which is probably the most common of the group types) and have done a lot of assignments throughout school. Note, this doesn't just apply to grammar school.
You get to work in groups or teams in junior high, high school, college and beyond.
Which brings me to my point. Kerry in the debate last Thursday talked a lot about about forming coalitions and summits.
- "I know I can do a better job in Iraq. I have a plan to have a summit with all of the allies, something this president has not yet achieved, not yet been able to do to bring people to the table."
- "But this president hasn't even held the kind of statesman-like summits that pull people together and get them to invest in those states. In fact, he's done the opposite. He pushed them away."
- "Secondly, when we went in, there were three countries: Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's not a grand coalition. We can do better."
As wonderful as all of this sounds, if we had formed a coalition with France and Germany we would have been in Jerks Inc. They had no intention of trying to work things out. Hell, they had agreements with Saddam himself and have been against the US since the end of the first Gulf War.
Now, it would be nice if we lived in a world where all of our 'allies' would form The Go Getters group. (Eden, Heaven and Utopia always look nice.) Sadly, we live in a world where that isn't true. Other countries have agendas and they aren't always going for an A in this assignment.
Once again we're better off kicking the jerks who would sabotage our best efforts out of the team entirely and work for the A ourselves.
