A student's job is to learn skills to prepare him/her for adult employment and responsible living.
Even though it is not directly taught in school, learning to get along with others is one of the most important skills a student can learn.
Cooperation means more than just getting along with others, regardless of what you may think or feel about them.
Teachers often make assignments "cooperative", which means each student works with one or more partners to complete the assignments.
Usually the assignment means that students may talk, help each other find the answers in a text book and work together on the assignment so each can turn in the same assignment page completed.
The teacher's goal is usually that students help each other, because there are students who work quickly and without difficulty as well as students who work slowly and/or have difficulty.
Far too frequently, the teacher's intent of peer mentoring and cooperation does not happen.
What Really Happens Rather than all working together on the assignment page, students divide up the requirements so that each person finds the answers to 1-5 questions.
When everyone has found their portion and written their answers, they then share the answers with the rest of the group, write them on their own pages and turn the pages in for a grade.
The slower and/or less able students must then complete the assignments on his/her own, usually for homework.
There are two reasons "cooperative" learning does not work out: 1.
Students focus on completing the task, because once it is done they can forget about it and have time to do what they want to do.
They focus on the task rather than the process.
An example may be an assignment to describe the three branches of government where each person completes a worksheet or simply writes paragraphs about each branch of government.
2.
Teachers do not know how to make cooperative learning assignments that truly build cooperation.
What A Cooperative Group Does Like a workplace situation, each member of the group should be responsible for a specific and necessary aspect of the task.
Each person has a portion of the task and learns his/her portion and learns from the others' portions.
In the government example, a good cooperative group would have one person responsible for describing the executive branch, a second person describing the judicial branch, a third person describing the legislative branch, and a fourth person (who may be slow or struggling reader) would draw a flowchart diagram illustrating the relationships among the branches.
Adult jobs are cooperative and children must learn the appropriate skills to perform in a social and cooperative environment.
Without the skills of getting along with others and completing their share of the workload, employers will find someone else to replace them.
They will then have difficulty supporting themselves.