Critics of collaborative learning such as Greg Myers argue that educators might let their enthusiasm for collaborative learning lead them to accepting social construction of knowledge as a good thing in itself. It is important, however, to distinguish between the use of specific collaborative learning activities--such as peer response groups or collective brainstorming--and collaborative learning as a holistic educational philosophy that informs all that goes on in the classroom. The real challenge arises in maintaining a dual perspective: seeing the social in the individual and the individual in the social. Implementing a collaborative learning strategy in a traditional academic setting is extremely difficult. The competitive nature of colleges and universities, the system of evaluation, students' past educational experiences, and even the academic calendar, all impede successful collaboration. The profession's fear of plagiarism and the compulsion to isolate students from each other during testing sessions are indicative of the fervent conviction that authorship is inherently individual. If there is to be any chance for success, educators will need to subject themselves to ideological self-analysis, examining those ideas and assumptions that seem most commonsensical and therefore inevitable, making them suddenly problematic, even uncomfortable. Only by discussing conflict and complication openly can teachers prevent collaborative learning from becoming just another pedagogical fad. (Six references are included.) (AEW)