Today was an inservice for teachers in our district. Inservice days are largely a waste of time, but this one, on the whole, was less so than most. We talked about cooperative learning (if you are an educator worth your salt, you should have felt a chill of excitement when you read those magic words). I liked most of what I heard today, although I responded with cynicism to the statement made by the presenter:"If teachers across America would commit to using these strategies in all classrooms k-12, I believe it would change the world. I believe that with all my heart." I wanted to tell her, "Lady,do not elevate a few good teaching techniques to life changing importance." (Besides, can a cooperative learning strategy really change the world when there are kids out there who want to bring boar semen to school?) Anyway, I can goof off on an inservice day with the best of the goof off teachers. We got to sit together as middle school teachers which was hugely enjoyable because middle school teachers are fun, being half whacked but mostly devoted as teachers (unlike high school teachers who are all whacked and elementary teachers who are so devoted they don't have time to be whacked). We did this one strategy where one person in the group was supposed to read a question to another member of the group who was supposed to answer it, after which the third person was supposed to paraphrase the answer. It was supposed to generate "rich conversation." The question posed to me was something like:"Were the major accomplishments in human history done by individuals acting alone or by individuals cooperating with others?" I wasn't trying to be a smart aleck or anything, but I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind:"well, except for the salvation of all mankind which was accomplished by just one individual with no help from anyone else, I guess all other events were accomplished by cooperation in some form." It was quite the conversation stopper. The other members of the group just sat there, not because they disagreed but because I had inadvertantly stumbled upon the one exception to the otherwise rhetorical question and there was nothing left to say. And, though the day was about education, there really was nothing left to say because apart from that single act done by that one individual (with no help from us-- no matter how committed we are as teachers) nothing has ever or will ever change the world.