In the collective psyche, the talents of the individual are diminished and so is their individuality. Heterogeneity is swallowed up by homogeneity and the unconscious quality prevails.

                                                                                                                    —-Gustave LeBon《The Crowd》

When people express their ideas and opinions, if they see that an opinion they agree with is widely welcomed, they will actively participate in it and it will become more and more boldly expressed and spread; and if they find that a certain opinion is not or rarely heeded (and sometimes they will experience a mass attack), they will remain silent even if they agree with it. The silence of one side of the argument causes the other side to gain momentum, and so the cycle repeats itself, creating a spiral in which the voice of one side grows stronger and the other side becomes more and more silent.

—-Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann《The Spiral of Silence：Public Opinion-Our Social Skin》

I have always found group work to be a great way to connect with my peers and to share knowledge, ideas and skills. But at the same time, I also think that group work is one of the most difficult ways, even though it has been around for a long time and even though it has many advantages. But I can still feel that not everyone is comfortable working in groups.

Group work is undoubtedly a group activity. The social psychologist Gustav believed that in a group individual talents and personalities are diminished and the group unconscious rises. Although I don’t think this is entirely true (I have always believed that there are people who cannot be assimilated), it is not unreasonable when you think about it. For one thing, students in a group cannot show their full individuality; everyone shows something, and everyone hides something. Even more elusive is the fact that we never know whether our revealed views and attitudes are more worthy of attention or whether our unexpressed opinions are more valuable.

The second thing that made me think about the panel discussion was the well-known spiral of silence. Very often the viewpoint or opinion of the first person to speak in a group becomes the dominant opinion (even though it may not be the best) and once it has been echoed, it is difficult to break this first-mover status. Although new ideas may emerge in the course of the discussion, they too are often quickly swept aside by the prevailing opinion. In such cases, the meaning of the group discussion is lost and it becomes something akin to a dictatorship of sorts.

It may seem insurmountable to solve these two problems, but it is actually not impossible to do so. Firstly I believe that there should be no leader in the group (perhaps akin to anarchy) and that each person should recognise that their own point of view is very important but also very unimportant. It is only in this state that one can really show oneself and express one’s views. There is also a need for each individual’s point of view to be recorded, although perhaps the group does not end up agreeing with the individual

The second point is to achieve true democracy, and what I want to see is that everyone is able to accept that others have ideas that are different from their own. And that everyone is able to focus on the commonalities in the different points of view, although this perception is difficult, but I believe that this is the only way that cooperation can take place. Group discussion is ultimately a model of education, where each person is both the transmitter and the educated, and this in itself is a very interesting model. But it also requires students to be able to think in terms of both the transmitter and the taught, which is what makes this model so difficult to work with in practice.

Sprint1: “The Crowd”? / Nuanxin Zhang / Contemporary Art & Open Learning (2022-2023)[SEM1] by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0