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interested in cooperative groupwork in education. How many keynote addresses can one person give and still have something fresh and insightful to say? In Liz's case, many indeed. One case in point occurred in Sweden in 1997 at the conference of the International Association for Intercultural Education, co-sponsored by the IASCE. In preparing for this, Liz knew she would have an international audience with speakers of many languages. She rose to this challenge by simplifying her system of complex concepts, distilling them to their essence, and by speaking very slowly and distinctly. This presentation was remarkable in both clarity and impact. And so, coming back to the language of the doctoral students at Stanford,
is Liz a "Great Mother Hen?"
Petr Kropotkin. (1972). Mutual aid: A factor of
evolution. Cooperative learning can make for strange bedfellows. Various religions and philosophies talk about the virtues of collaboration. Here is another instance of the wide range of sources from which we can find support for cooperative learning. A few weeks ago, I sent a friend of mine a draft of a paper I had co-authored on collaboration and autonomy. He replied that he was a bit busy and would send feedback later, but for now I would do well to read an early book on collaboration by Petr Kropotkin. I had vaguely heard of the author, associating his name with anarchism not collaboration. The book's introduction by the famous anthropologist Ashley Montagu provides a sketch of Kropotkin's life. He was born in Russia in 1842. While working as a military officer in Siberia in the 1860s he undertook many studies of natural life there. His interaction with people of Siberia led him to anarchist philosophy. In the 1870s, his views landed him in a czarist jail from which he escaped after two years. He lived abroad until returning to Russia after the 1917 revolution. He remained there until his death in 1921, although he was a critic of the Soviet government. The book, originally published in 1902, is a compilation of articles the author wrote in the 1890s and I read the 1972 edition of this earlier work. The book's main thesis is that Darwin's theory of evolution has been misunderstood by naturalists and misapplied by social scientists to support the view that competition is the main form of interaction in nature and in human society. Kropotkin argues that, instead, cooperation is the key, not just to survival but also to evolution: thus, the title. Although Kropotkin was writing more than 100 years ago, this same debate continues today, with the dominant, or at least the loudest, view seeming to be that competition is the main engine of growth driving progress. Indeed, some people argue against cooperative learning, fearing that it will weaken students' ability to compete and will to do so. Reading the Kropotkin book reminded me of two much more recent books, both by Alfie Kohn, refuting this idea: No contest: The Case Against Competition, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1992 and The Brighter Side of Human Nature: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life, 1990, New York: Basic Books. According to Kropotkin, Darwin's concept of the struggle for existence had been misinterpreted to take on the narrow meaning of the struggle of the individual against all others. In The Descent of Man he [Darwin] gave some powerful pages to illustrate its proper, wide sense. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how that substitution
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I'm
not sure about the Hen part. But she certainly functions as a Great Mother
Sociologist for cooperation and group work in education. We are blessed
by her great intellectual contributions to the field, by her modeling
of our deepest values, and by her enormous impact on her students and
colleagues. Many of us have been deeply touched by her person and her
friendship as well as by her ideas. 
