During my second week at Dundee University studying Primary education I had a values workshop in which we were placed into groups of around seven and were given a task. We were told that we were going to be given a pack inside which was materials that we could use to make something that would be useful to a student who had just arrived at the university. The four groups that were present in my room were all given different materials inside the packs, my group was given a basic pack with a piece of paper, a pen (which ended up not working), two post it notes and a couple of paper clips. So as my group brain stormed the ideas that we could make with our piece of paper and post it notes we started looking around at other tables and noticed that the other groups had a lot more materials than us and clearly would have more ideas that they could follow through on than us. However this didn’t stop us coming up with an idea which I am proud of. We made a first week planner which gives you all the info you need for your first week along with important numbers to call and a map of the campus on the back. We then had to do a two minute presentation explaining our idea.

After all the groups had completed their presentations we were graded, with the two groups who had the most materials coming top.

Obviously not scoring quite high in the task hurt and most of my group felt hard done by and even felt anger and frustration towards the leader of the workshop as we felt the combination of our hard work, product we made and level of our presentation was not reflected in the score.

We later learned that the whole thing was set up and the scores weren’t actually a reflection of what work we put into the presentation and that no matter how good our ideas were the groups who had the most materials were always gonna win. At this point we started to realise that this wasn’t just a group task but there was a further meaning and goal behind this.

I believe it was to show us that we can’t be biased towards children or anyone in society based on their background. That good ideas can come out of barely anything and that it doesn’t matter who you are, that it is what you bring to the table is what counts.