Mostafa Malekian: The Conditions That Make Group Study More Beneficial Than Individual Study

Mostafa Malekian: Under the following conditions, group study is always more beneficial than individual study

1_ The First Condition

The individuals should be at roughly the same level, with a variance of about ten to twenty percent; otherwise, it takes on a teacher-student dynamic. In practice, you see that two of you have become teachers and two of you have become students, and this issue both takes up the time of those who have assumed the teacher role and those who have assumed the learner role. I believe that members should have at most a twenty percent difference in phase. That is, they should be peers and of the same group so that, as seminary students say, the members engage in dialectical discussion, not that it appears to be a discussion but in practice one is teaching and the other is being taught.

2_ The Second Condition

They must have a minimum threshold of collective ethics so that their internal group dynamics do not gradually give rise to feelings like "let me bring this person down," "let me disregard what so-and-so says to humiliate them," and so on. In short, if such rivalries emerge, even the emotional bond between members will gradually be lost. I think this is very important; many times, a group has started studying together, and within a few months, they have even lost their initial friendship because states of rivalry, competition, and comparison arose among them.

3_ The Third Condition:

Members should be able to commit, inwardly to their conscience and outwardly to others, not to be absent from more than 20 percent of the sessions; for example, to say that the maximum absence I will have is one session out of every five. If this is not the case, it gradually destroys the group's cohesion, and a sense of discouragement gradually spreads among the rest.

If you look closely in the West, in the humanities like literature and philosophy, the greatest advances were made by collective groups; for instance, when they speak of the five Cambridge friends, meaning Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, Broad..., it was because there were five of them that these works came into being.

And in Iran, group study has become more common than before (of course, I mean in Tehran; I don't know about other cities in the country), but it is still much less common than in the West. I think if these three conditions are met, they should work collectively; that is, they should do their research and studies, but discuss the book together in the group. One says, "I didn't understand this," and your friend explains it, and if you want to make a comment about the book's content, your comment will be more mature.

I especially emphasize that you should definitely read seminal books in a group; read books that have attained a classic status in a group setting. For example, Kant's book on Education is a classic book, or Schopenhauer's The Wisdom of Life, likewise.

Although I believe even the simplest books are more beneficial if read in a group.

One of the merits of the Islamic seminaries is that after taking a lesson, a dialectical discussion must always take place, which unfortunately does not exist in universities; although discussion in the seminaries has been weakening day by day since the revolution, in the past it was impossible for seminarians not to engage in discussion, to the extent that professors would say, "If you do not discuss the lesson you have taken, I am not willing for you to attend the next session's class."

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Mostafa Malekian: The Conditions That Make Group Study More Beneficial Than Individual Study

Mostafa Malekian in a private conversation, Summer 2016

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