Only two of the following statements can be true. Choose your two.

1. Students learn best when they interact with other students. Collaboration is a learning strategy that encourages students to grow as thinkers. When students  read the same book and come to class with their own individual responses, individual questions, and individual choices about the most important lines in that book, the discussion is a lively one in which each person becomes a better thinker because the ideas he or she came to class with are challenged, expanded, or affirmed by the diverse thinking of others.
2.  The workplace is most productive when those in it interact with one another. Tony Wagner of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, who is an expert in the future of work in our complex world, identifies Seven Survival Skills for the world of work now and in the future. One of those seven is “Collaboration Across Networks and Leading By Influence”. He advocates that those in the workplace ask provocative questions and offer individual perspectives for problem solving as they interact with a broad diversity of thinkers so that problems are best solved and innovations created.
3. The President of the United States does not need to consult with anyone because he knows more than anyone else. He is a “stable genius”.  He needs no one, including those who research and write about the issues at hand and those with whom he could meet and discuss those issues. He is right when he says, “I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.” And it was a good move for him to not talk with knowledgeable people in our government before meeting with the Chinese president to discuss trade negotiations because our president is right when he says,  “I know it better than anybody knows it, and my gut has always been right.”

Answer: With #1 and #2, the group dynamic insures that the best thinking will come forward.  With #3, we are in big trouble. Trump’s approach insures insular, myopic thinking, which benefits no one. In short, we are screwed.