"This style of teaching reflects the business community," one fifth-grade teacher in a Manhattan public school told me, "where people's respect for others is based on their verbal abilities, not their originality or insight. You have to be someone who speaks well and calls attention to yourself. It's an elitism based on something other than merit." "Today the world of business works in groups, so now the kids do it in school," a third-grade teacher in Decatur, Georgia, explained. "Cooperative learning enables skills in working as teams--skills that are in dire demand in the workplace," writes the educational consultant Bruce Williams."