Amber Burg's Blog

Schools teach the lessons that are supposedly the building blocks to making us real world ready. They drill into us that if you can’t work together as a team then you won’t get a job. Jobs are all about team building and teamwork but what exactly do we learn about group projects in schools? Why do students hate group projects?

Students learn that not everyone has to work equally on the project. Everyone has probably had that one group that was an absolute nightmare to work with. Its not because we hate teamwork it’s because we hate having the group where nobody helps and one person, usually the person who hates group projects, gets stuck doing the whole project.

It teaches students that only one person really has to do the work and everyone in the group gets the same points. The lazier students know this and they don’t care what their grades are as long as they pass. This leads to one person that cares about their grade doing the whole project.

“insert student stuff”

Even some teachers hate giving group projects for the same reason.

“insert teacher stuff”

Schools saying group projects will make us ready for the future need to take another look at them. It’s teaching student that want good grades that they can’t rely on other members of the group to do their share because they know it won’t get done. This in turn makes them frustrated with teamwork and less accepting of team projects. In other cases, it teaches students that don’t do their share of the work that they can just get away with it and get the same grade as everyone else. It makes them lazier and a poor team player.

Teamwork doesn’t always make the dream work, especially if you have the wrong group.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 30th, 2014 at 6:37 pm and is filed under Journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.