EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP March 1991 Group Grade Grubbing versus Cooperative Learning By Alfie Kohn Even before the recent surge of interest in cooperative learning (CL), researchers and practitioners were already staking out positions on precisely what the term denotes and how the idea should be implemented. Constructive controversies (or, less charitably, factional disputes) have arisen with respect to almost every aspect … Read More
Caring Kids: The Role of the Schools (*)
PHI DELTA KAPPAN March 1991 Caring Kids The Role of the Schools By Alfie Kohn “Education worthy of the name is essentially education of character,” the philosopher Martin Buber told a gathering of teachers in 1939.(1) In saying this, he presented a challenge more radical and unsettling than his audience may have realized. He did not mean that schools should … Read More
From You Know What They Say…: The Truth About Popular Beliefs (Harper Collins, 1990) Debunking a Convenient Myth About the Destruction of Hiroshima & Nagasaki By Alfie Kohn Many nations have tested nuclear weapons, but only one has ever used them. That nation is the United States; the bombs it dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 … Read More
The Humanity of Humans
From THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF HUMAN NATURE: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life (Basic Books, 1990) The Humanity of Humans By Alfie Kohn I am looking at two photographs that are sitting on my desk. The first, which I clipped out of a newspaper, is of a teenage girl. She has a charming smile and shoulder-length hair, and she is … Read More
Fun & Fitness Without Competition
WOMEN’S SPORTS & FITNESS July/August 1990 Fun & Fitness Without Competition By Alfie Kohn I learned my first game at a birthday party. You remember it: X players scramble for X-minus-one chairs each time the music stops. In every round a child is eliminated until at the end only one is left triumphantly seated while everyone else is standing on the … Read More
Getting a Grip on Schizophrenia
LOS ANGELES TIMES June 25, 1990 Getting a Grip on Schizophrenia By Alfie Kohn WORCESTER, Mass. — At a conference titled “What Is Schizophrenia?” held here earlier this month, the first speaker paused at the podium to ask for the next slide, which he said would show a list of “established facts” about the disorder. Instead, the screen suddenly went … Read More
Do Religious People Help More? Not So You’d Notice
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY December 1989 Do Religious People Help More? Not So You’d Notice By Alfie Kohn [This is a slightly expanded version of the published article.] In a society that teaches us to associate morality with religion, it is easy to assume that a strong relationship exists between piety and pity, between God and good. After all, the sacred texts of … Read More
Altruism Within Egoism (Book Review)
THE NATION May 29, 1989 Altruism Within Egoism By Alfie Kohn Review of: PASSIONS WITHIN REASON: The Strategic Role of the Emotions By Robert H. Frank. Norton. 304 pp. Also discussed in this review: ECONOMICS FOR A CIVILIZED SOCIETY. By Greg Davidson and Paul Davidson. Norton. 213 pp. THE MORAL DIMENSION: Toward a New Economics. By Amitai Etzioni. Free Press. … Read More
Beyond Selfishness
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY October 1988 Beyond Selfishness By Alfie Kohn You realize you left your wallet on the bus and you give up hope of ever seeing it again. But someone calls that evening asking how to return the wallet to you. Two toddlers are roughhousing when one suddenly begins to cry. The other child rushes to fetch his own security … Read More
Paris Slide Show
BOSTON GLOBE June 19, 1988 Paris Slide Show By Alfie Kohn Somebody want to get the lights, please? OK. This first one was taken on the Air France 747 that conveyed me and my two carry-on bags across the Atlantic. That elderly woman on my left (your right) spent most of the journey rapidly clicking her knitting needles and chattering … Read More