Thanks to my filled leisure time calendar I'm still reading about the
cooperative game. Cockburn's words remind me of things, that are no longer adequate for todays jobs. He is writing about teamwork in class and that pupils are drilled to work alone thanks to tests and exams. This is okay for basic knowledge like writing, reading and do simple math. As soon as kids grow older and by the age of at least 12 they should work in teams to accomplish tasks. And I'm not speaking about homework projects. I'm thinking about group tests in teacher defined groups with specific tasks the team needs to accomplish. This only works for classes, where creative thinking and teamwork makes sense like physics, math and so on. It will not work with history I guess, but history is one of the classes I'd like to restructure as well. In the always on society, nobody needs to know details about locations, birth and death years. You can look all that stuff up in seconds. Just an overview of all this should be enough for the average pupil. If you need it, you will know it in later years. Students should be forced to solve problems by finding a solution the whole team is happy with and no specific right answer exists. Would it be cool to have a test at the end of the year to test math, physics, a bit of history and handicrafts by assigning the task to build a catapult that shoots exactly 5m and create the plans for a catapult that shoots 8m. By watching and guiding the team, teachers should be able to assign individual grades.
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