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The Reign of Group Think: Be Nice and Compromise
David Horowitz's NewsReal Blog ^ | March 29, 2011 | Walter Hudson

Posted on 03/29/2011 10:08:34 PM PDT by Walter Scott Hudson

I remember being grouped together with other students as early as the first grade. Rather than being arranged in rows of individual desks, we were clustered in groups of four, facing each other. We were given work to do as a group, rather than as individuals.

I despised the practice then, and I continued to all the way through college. It didn't seem right to have to compensate for others and share a grade. The result was always the same. I did less and worse than I would have individually. It was far more work to pull others along than it would have been to work alone, and there were diminishing returns. Since I did not benefit from that extra work, I found a slower pace which resulted in the best work-to-result ratio.

It wasn't until I viewed Curtis Bower's fantastic documentary film Agenda: Grinding America Down, and subsequently interviewed him for NewsReal Blog, that I fully understood just how insidious such group work is. It's objective is to produce the results I saw growing up, retarding the individual and promoting group think.

Consider how effective this and similar strategies have been. We now operate within a political culture which regards compromise as a virtue.

Over the weekend, The Daily Beast published a diatribe by John Avlon bemoaning the "rightward shift" of the Minnesota GOP. The state party has increasingly become a distinct alternative to the Democrats, rather than a slower track to socialism. This "Bachmannization" of the party has manifest in statements of uncompromising conviction. To Avlon, such certitude is horrific...

(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...


TOPICS: Education; Politics; Society
KEYWORDS: collectivism; culturalmarxism; dewey; education; groupthink; hegel; individualism; minnesota; republicans; saulalinsky; sharedmediocrity

1 posted on 03/29/2011 10:08:38 PM PDT by Walter Scott Hudson
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To: Walter Scott Hudson
In the real world, sometimes team work makes a lot of sense, and sometimes it is a waste of time. A wise manager knows when to use the "teamwork" model and when not to.

Rarely should a class room employ teams. Extracurricular activities teach teamwork.

2 posted on 03/29/2011 10:15:44 PM PDT by mlocher (Is it time to cash in before I am taxed out?)
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To: Walter Scott Hudson; mlocher

“The Reign of Group Think: Be Nice and Compromise”

That’s this year...

Last year it was: “We won, so we get to call the shots”


3 posted on 03/29/2011 11:01:10 PM PDT by aquila48
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To: Walter Scott Hudson

Thanks. Will be sharing this with my kids. One daughter in particular that has to work on a group project with two slackers. (An Earth Day project even!)

She knows enough not to be fooled by some of the stuff about Earth Day (she said no to a global warming project, yes to a reduce litter project). But - she came back the other day saying how they are going to get a bad grade anyway, and why do I have to do all the work, etc.

I told her it is good experience. In your job you’ll have to learn how to work with slackers too. (Along with jerks, perverts, thieves ......) BUT - you can’t let them bring you down to their level.


4 posted on 03/29/2011 11:19:47 PM PDT by 21twelve ( You can go from boom to bust, from dreams to a bowl of dust ... another lost generation.)
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To: Walter Scott Hudson

The group work in grade school is to condition you to the collective. To squash competition and the “think outside the box” individualism that made America great.

The cultural Marxists, particularly Marcuse injected Marxist ideology into the curricula to make a predominant individualistic, competitive society into a dependent, stunted, conditioned into always group consensus to hate capitalism.

Dewey organized the schools using the Prussian design to get mass conformity.

Eakman’s book, Cloning of the American Mind explains all the methodologies and what they are designed to produce. (Non=thinking, undisciplined atheists).

Gato’s book, The Underground History of American Education explains how the design of forced schooling-one class age==was to get children to conform to group think....the one’s that think outside the box are humiliated and ostracized by the group. Much deeper psychology is explained in both books. They are right. I worked in the classrooms for years as a volunteer and I saw the Values Clarification, Multiculturalism, Tolerance. and other cr*p which is designed to kill Christian paradigm and inject cognitive dissonance so that when the child finish the brainwashing they wont be able to think logically. Ex-KGB explained this...Yuri in the Youtube videos.


5 posted on 03/29/2011 11:22:19 PM PDT by savagesusie
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To: 21twelve

If your daughter is a teacher, make sure she reads Eakman’s Cloning of the American Mind.

It explains the curricula and what it is designed to do. It is the most disturbing book I have ever read....and exposes the most evil and insidious people ever on earth. It was more disturbing than the Rape of Nanking.

What those in charge of DOE have been doing to the minds of the children though the use of psychology is really evil. I would personally send them all to prison and the electric chair.

The psychology of Skinner is used to condition the children and destroy their ability to reason and think logically using cognitive dissonance, etc. The main purpose of our public schools in America is to change the attitudes and values of the children to the Marxist/atheist/hedonist one. It is not meant to impart knowledge at all.


6 posted on 03/29/2011 11:30:55 PM PDT by savagesusie
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To: savagesusie

No - she’s 13. So maybe I’ll have to read the book. So far my kids (oldest is 16) have been able to stay above the fray - better than me when I was their age!

In spite of their public education, the strong support of both parents in their lives and a lot of church activities and connections gives me hope. At least for them.

It is sad when you go to a parent’s night at the school, and out of 30 kids in a class, maybe 10 of the kid’s parents show up.


7 posted on 03/29/2011 11:58:01 PM PDT by 21twelve ( You can go from boom to bust, from dreams to a bowl of dust ... another lost generation.)
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To: 21twelve

“It is sad when you go to a parent’s night at the school, and out of 30 kids in a class, maybe 10 of the kid’s parents show up.”

I went to a parent’s night when my daughter was in a magnet school as a gifted child. Of course the magnet school was in the ghetto to boost the “no child left behind” scores. They had a free chicken dinner. The place was packed. I guess I should give them credit for figuring out how to get the parents and (massively) extended family involved.


8 posted on 03/30/2011 12:46:15 AM PDT by pops88 (geek chick over 40)
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To: Walter Scott Hudson

I absolutely hated having to do group projects in college. The colleges try to explain that it will help for when you work in a company where you will have to do projects for the boss. I call BS on that notion. First of all in a company everyone is there 8 hours a day and can work on the project at one time without other interuptions. Projects at work NORMALLY provides a vision or goal that must be achieved at the end. Also typically with a project at work, there are updates to the boss throughout the life of the project so if you are in the wrong direction adjustments can be made. In college, nobody wants to do the project, nobody takes it seriously, nobody wants to do the work, normally little to no vision or theme. Big waste of time IMHO.


9 posted on 03/30/2011 4:02:01 AM PDT by napscoordinator
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To: napscoordinator

And one or two diligent students carry the load for the rest. sigh Been there done that.


10 posted on 03/30/2011 4:11:34 AM PDT by kalee (The offences we give, we write in the dust; Those we take, we engrave in marble. J Huett 1658)
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To: kalee

The timeless 80/20 rule. 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work.


11 posted on 03/30/2011 4:45:55 AM PDT by Senator John Blutarski (The progress of government: republic, democracy, technocracy, bureaucracy, plutocracy, kleptocracy,)
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To: Senator John Blutarski
The timeless 80/20 rule

It is timeless and it is versatile. It shows up everywhere. 20% of the people make 80% of the money, etc. Just recently I was wondering if anyone remembered that or if it had faded away. I think it is especially informative when thinking about redistribution of wealth. If we started over with everyone having exactly the same amount of wealth it would not be long until the 80-20 rule had once again redistributed the wealth.

12 posted on 03/30/2011 6:12:28 AM PDT by Mind-numbed Robot (Not all that needs to be done needs to be done by the government!)
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To: Walter Scott Hudson

Corporate culture employs group group think routinely. The tactic is to control by dividing, ostracizing and imposing compromise on employees. If an employee does not toe the corporate policy line he/she will quickly be attacked with goup pressure to conform. If an employee refuses to comply or conform then threats of no raise, no promotion or even getting fired will be made.


13 posted on 03/30/2011 6:26:22 AM PDT by orinoco
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To: 21twelve

Parents like you give me hope. I raised 5 children and eventually I relied on Catholic schools to help...I did a little homeschooling, also. But most Catholic schools use some curricula that is created for the public schools and there were only lay people who taught. Although some teachers were excellent; some were not. But that is natural.

The effects of popular culture are so invasive, their ideas are so seductive to children that it is designed to cause friction between parents and children, as all Marxism is—to pit groups against other groups. Marxist want children to hate and rebel against their parental value system, that is what Eakman claims—that public schools are intentionally manipulating children into moral relativism who learn to think by emotion, not intellect. They completely turned our education system upside down—starting with Dewey who wanted children younger —to mold their “plastic” mind—and created the Prussian model of forced one-age public schools to create mass conformity (Gato goes into this in amazing detail. Working in child development and the schools I firmly agree with his analysis.

Am I paranoid....never. I do believe in God. I was raised in very traditional Catholic schools with nuns and lots of siblings and a mother who had such common sense it amazes me even now after her death.

That is the reason I bother to post....to inform people to the underlying motives. They would be horrified if they knew what I know....and it is all easily accessed —some free, like Gato’s Underground History of American Education. He goes into who funded the textbooks and their motives. And talks about the results—all researched. A bit disjointed but if you can wade through it, it has a wealth of information, like Eakman. They validate each other. Gato was a high school teacher for decades in NYC who won all sorts of awards and was revolted by the system the kids were trapped in and quit and did research into WHY.

Closing of the American Mind by Bloom is a fundamental book on the philosophy of Postmodernism and how it came over from the Continent to infect the thinking in all the elite universities in the late 1800’s. (Nihilism and as the Pope says, The Culture of Death). That book is also very unsettling.. Bloom wrote it in 1985 or so and observed this disturbing trend of “thinking” in his students. Major shift from the 60’s to the 80’s. What did the professor of philosophy find? Empty heads.....no knowledge of the fundamental ideas that all students used to have until the late 70’s. Just packages of emotions with no skills in logic and reason...no foundation to build on.

That is what Eakman’s book is about....How and why this happens. She outlines it.


14 posted on 03/30/2011 9:01:16 AM PDT by savagesusie
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To: orinoco

Exactly. Group think is the result of political correctness which allows one way to think on any given issue==the Marxist, collective, utilitarian one.

Political Correctness was designed to destroy America by the cultural Marxists, Marcuse and friends. To destroy individualism, “think outside the box”, the natural family and Christianity which supports individualism and loyalty to family and dignity to those in societies that government wants to eliminate.

PC is designed to end debate...so that the individual will be embarrassed and humiliated if they don’t follow the group think.

The reason this “group think” now works...when in Patrick Henry’s day it never would have worked—

This conditioning is started in Kindergarden with the Prussian style school system which consists of all peers. It was designed by the Fabian socialist Dewey. The one child who sticks out in any way is subtly humiliated and manipulated until he conforms to the group. They are taught to use emotion rather than intellect in all subjects, even math. Since commie Carter and DOE this curricula and the programmed teachers now reach into all areas of the US, even the very conservative ones.


15 posted on 03/30/2011 9:12:23 AM PDT by savagesusie
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To: Walter Scott Hudson

“We now operate within a political culture which regards compromise as a virtue.”

Compromise is neither virtue nor vice. It is a tool like any other, sometimes necessary and others not.


16 posted on 05/10/2011 7:30:12 PM PDT by ivyleaguebrat
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