Every group is as strong as its weakest member

Rafael gave this brief definition aboiut greoupwork and it made me stop to think. I´ll have to reflect on this. I´m a great believer in the power of voluntary teams and I think this definition is based on the wrong idea about a group. If a group is democratically-organically developed and members are allowed to identify their own strengths and the way they can contribute to the successful completion of a task.
I think we should look at the ways we organise groups rather than negate their usefulness.
My other problem is the intrinsic judgement about people being "weak" or "strong". Once again, I believe that we cannot identify people as eithe or both as we are all strong and week at the same time, you don´t want to have a boxing match with Muhamad Ali but you could probably beat him at a maths quiz.
The most difficult aspect of forming and running groups is giving each member and individual role, and offer them ways of contributing to the team effort, as well as design ways to support and scaffold the contribution of the otherwise weaker members.
It is of course also an interesting question what we mean by a strong group? Are they successful at perforning their task? Are they faster in coming up with solutions and producing results? Do they work together better than the other groups?
There are so many ways to interpret what success and a good group is that we cannot just leave it at the conclusion that the weakest links break the chain because groups are not chains, they are interconnected systems where the push and the pull works in a way that always the stong ones get to push and support the weaker ones but who is strong and weak depends on the task at hand.

Do animals have emotions?

Great conversation with Sophie - interesting conclusion: some animals (bigger ones) have emotions while smaller ones (for example cockroaches) don´t.
I´ll have to look into this.

Let´s get started then

I am a keen believer in not expecting anything from others that I don´t expect from myself. My plan is to post here 3-4 times every week to share my reflections, ideas, impressions and plans about the lessons we spenbd together.
Working with this group has been the most amazing challenge and privilege. I wake up every morning looking forward to working with this group. You challenge and help me understand your world, which I am very proud and happy to be a part of.
I am looking forward to today´s TOK lesson. Your task will be to look for a question in a publication and decide if it´s a knowledge question and what kind of answers you could give to it.