This view is based on the notion that real-world jobs involve cooperative efforts in groups, and that competition among individual students is neither a good model of the real world nor good for learning. This idea contradicts real world experience showing that those who do math in organizations rarely do so in a group setting. In any case, the problems with this approach occur long before the students reach the job market. When children work in groups in school, the distribution of work, and of learning, is not equal. Teachers are supposed to prevent this, but it happens anyway.
Problems often occur from unequal ability levels within a group.
In such cases, the most advanced students do the bulk of the work, with the others copying from them. In groups of equal ability levels, students have been known to split up the work and then copy answers. Group assessments are frequently objected to as well. They tend to pull down the evaluations of the top students, while allowing weaker students to pass without learning the material. This amplifies the problems associated with the cooperative approach.