Actually, my experience has been the exact opposite. In U.S. education, students are taught to submit to a "leader." This is the big problem, NOT the problem of a "natural leader emerging."nugabird said:Students are taught co-operation skills, rather than leadership skills.
I think that there is a difference between a creative person giving input to a group and a "leader" emerging who gives orders. With the former, there is "natural cooperation" with creativity, and the creative person inspires creativity in others.
Wallace and Wallechinsky write in The People's Almanac:
Discussing the influence of television, Daniel Boorstin wrote:After World War II, television flourished... Psychologists and sociologists were brought in to study human nature in relation to selling; in other words, to figure out how to manipulate people without their feeling manipulated. Dr. Ernest Dichter, President of the Institute for Motivational Research made a statement in 1941... 'the successful ad agency manipulates human motivations and desires and develops a need for goods with which the public has at one time been unfamiliar -- perhaps even undesirous of purchasing.'
Allen Funt, host of a popular television show, Candid Camera, was once asked what was the most disturbing thing he had learned about people in his years of dealing with them through the media. His response was chilling in its ramifications:"Here at last is a supermarket of surrogate experience. Successful programming offers entertainment - under the guise of instruction; instruction - under the guise of entertainment; political persuasion - with the appeal of advertising; and advertising - with the appeal of drama."
[...] programmed television serves not only to spread acquiescence and conformity, but it represents a deliberate industry approach."
Submission to minimal signs of authority; lack of knowledge and awareness; and a desire for a quick fix and an easy way out."The worst thing, and I see it over and over, is how easily people can be led by any kind of authority figure, or even the most minimal kinds of authority. A well-dressed man walks up the down escalator and most people will turn around and try desperately to go up also... We put up a sign on the road, 'Delaware Closed Today'. Motorists didn't even question it. Instead they asked: 'Is Jersey open?'"
It is "submission to minimal signs of authority that is the problem, NOT cooperation. There IS no cooperation between citizens, there is just submission to "leaders" no matter how vile and evil they are.