Sharing Isn’t Caring

Zeke Ma

Jannie Paredes

English 2 Honors

31 May 2016

Sharing isn’t Caring

“Sharing is Caring”-at least that’s what the preschool teachers said. But is that really the truth?

We’re long past the era of sharing our favorite trucks and dolls. But as a preschool graduate, I can personally attest to the another type of sharing in our schools -- group projects.

For a lot of people, they’re understandably a blessing - time to ride on the backs of Timothy, Nicklas, Mindy, and, well, myself. But collaborative efforts aren’t just a problem for us -- everyone, both smart and, uh, average, is getting cheated out of their potential education.

Therefore, the solution is simple -- stop group projects. It sounds crazy, but as we’ll see today, without group projects in American public high schools, this country and its youth will be educated far beyond our current state.

Let’s talk about group failure.

To understand this, we need to look at the belief behind group projects -- that the collective effort will always be the most effective. And in a sense, it’s true. 20 bridges would get built much faster with 20 workers than just by one man (or woman-gender equality!). But we get a different story when we assess individual effectiveness. Shielded by a crowd, some builders are definitely going to take it easy. Without individual components, such as the assembly line, it is more efficient to have each person work on his or her own bridge, rather than collaborate.

But as Frank Underwood says “I have a distaste for hypotheticals”, so let’s look at a real life bridge project -- Communist Russia, or more accurately, the USSR.

Remember Animal Farm? Communism was, and is, a social system that hinges on the equality and goodness of man. Albeit, in most countries it led to a totalitarian government, but the concept itself is actually fairly innocent, aside from the massive revolution part.

So why are there only five countries actively practicing the system? And what happened to the USSR? Remember, Communism is based on human equality, and human goodness. Well, the countries successfully got most of their population equal -- that is, flat broke with no property, so...check? However, even the most ruthless dictators couldn’t achieve the second requirement of the system, since man isn’t going to work for others solely out of the goodness of his heart (sorry Confucians).

Let’s look at the evidence. According to Stanford Computer Science in Communism: Work Ethic and Motivation (Communism and Computer Ethics), “... in a study conducted in the former USSR, over 50% of the work force admitted to drinking alcohol while on the job. Furthermore,