PURPOSE
SGO provides a platform for specialized study groups working with particular texts. A study group is not a classroom, a tutoring session, or a debating arena, but an opportunity for trade. In SGO, highly motivated students of history or philosophy can enhance their individual studies of a certain text by trading insights, questions, and answers with other individuals who are studying the same text at the same time.
SGO welcomes serious students of Objectivism. They may be young or old. They may be enrolled in academia or studying on their own plan. They may have a lot or only a little knowledge of the subject they wish to study. Trade arises from such differences. For example, a novice in a particular subject may ask a question that requires more knowledgeable members to stop, think, and make explicit what they had only assumed as "obvious" before.
FEATURES AND BENEFITS
Rigorous etiquette ensures that study-group members focus their writings on ideas not on other members of the study group.
Scheduling--one section of text per week--ensures steady, thorough, consistent study.
Leadership--one administrator overall and one leader for each study group--provides focus and continuity throughout the weeks or months of study. The temporary position of study-group leader offers a brief opportunity to practice project-management and other social skills as a means for achieving one's individual, long-term, intellectual goals.
Open archives provide information that enables serious students to decide whether to purchase and study a particular text. However, the study groups, once completed and archived, are not a substitute for buying a text. By design, each study group covers only parts of a whole text, or, in the case of very short texts, will cover only certain points. Archived study groups are not "Cliff's Notes" for the lazy.
Long advanced notice allows serious students to prepare adequately, perhaps completing an initial reading of the assigned text as a whole, long before the study group begins addressing parts of that text.
PROCEDURE
Consider an imaginary example.
1. SETTING UP
One person, Alice Smith, proposes a six-week study group focusing on one small part of Immanuel Kant's very difficult Critique of Pure Reason: the philosophically dense, 20-page "Preface." Smith suggests a start date two months ahead, and she volunteers to be the leader. She already has some knowledge of the general subject, Kant's philosophy, and she wants to test that knowledge as well as extend it.
A study group leader might be an academic who plans to use the text in a course someday and wants to practice leading serious students through it to see what kinds of problems arise. On the other hand, some study groups might have leaders who are novices both in leadership and content, but they are willing to work under supervision by the SGO administrator, who has been conducting study groups for fifteen years through ad hoc email lists.
2. SIGNING-UP
After reading the study-group leader's description of the proposed study group and its text, the minimum number of SGO members sign up and make a commitment to participate. The wisest study-group members immediately obtain the text, begin reading ahead, and perhaps even start outlining the posts (up to 400 words each) they will write weekly once the study group officially begins.
3. POSTING WEEKLY
The six-week study group begins. It covers one fifth of the reading each week for five weeks, reserving the last week of the six weeks for conclusions or other discussion. For each week's reading assignment, each participant writes a primary post in one of these forms: (1) a summary or outline of the whole reading; (2) a philosophical detection of an important part of the text; (3) an essentialization of the author's argument in the text; (4) a discussion ("chewing") of some aspect of the text, identifying its essential nature, its implications, and its alternatives; (5) an elaborated question (explaining why a certain question about the text is important and why it is difficult to answer); or (6) answering most or all of the optional study questions which the moderator usually posts at the beginning of each week.
How long should the primary post be? Long enough to cover the essential elements of the subject, tie the subject to the text (perhaps citing page numbers), and be worthy of trade with others in the study group. Typical posts range from about 50 words to 300 words.
The study group member posts any time during the study-group week, from Monday to Sunday.
In addition to his obligatory weekly post, each study group member can also, at any time, make additional comments or ask shorter questions about the text or about points raised by other members' posts; no one has an obligation to reply. By design, SGO has no "quote" function. SGO etiquette requires members to always deal with ideas (summarized in one's own words), not the particular wording or "subtext" of other members' posts. This approach has the added benefit of providing practice in essentializing a target idea and addressing the idea, not another study group member.
When the study group ends, each member should have expanded his knowledge of the particular text the group examined. He will have answered some of his original questions, but the study group experience should also give rise to new questions, which only more study will answer. A study group is not the end of study, but only one turn on the spiral of learning.
SAMPLES
Sample Study Group #1
Sample Study Group #2
