January 11, 2022 Second Thoughts About Community and “Empathy” By Alfie Kohn We’re too quick to ascribe neutrality to things that actually aren’t neutral at all. Standardized tests, for example, don’t provide anything like an objective “snapshot” of teaching and learning. Not only are they best at measuring relatively trivial intellectual capabilities, but administering them influences what gets taught, thereby … Read More
Indoctrination
November 4, 2021 Indoctrination By Alfie Kohn Some years ago I gave a talk in which I outlined classroom practices that can promote caring and cooperation. When I was done, a woman stood up and informed me heatedly that she doesn’t send her child to school “to learn to be nice.” That, she said, would be “social engineering.” Besides, she … Read More
What Makes a True Skeptic?
September 24, 2021 What Makes a True Skeptic? By Alfie Kohn Imagine that you’ve spent a good part of your life vigorously defending a certain idea, only to hear that idea being invoked to justify something you find abhorrent. Perhaps you’re a strong supporter of academic freedom and a believer in considering multiple points of view — and then you … Read More
When Racism Isn’t the Only Problem
July 14, 2021 When Racism Isn’t the Only Problem By Alfie Kohn I’ve been thinking lately about policies that are multiply flawed. Drilling for oil in the Arctic Refuge is a bad idea not only because it threatens wildlife but also because it exacerbates the climate crisis. Diverting taxpayer funds to religious schools undermines public education while simultaneously breaching the … Read More
The Progressive Teacher’s Role in the Classroom
May 3, 2021 The Progressive Teacher’s Role in the Classroom What Active Adult Involvement Does and Doesn’t Entail By Alfie Kohn According to Michael Harrington and many other scholars, a careful reading of Marx’s work makes it clear that he “regarded democracy as the essence of socialism.” Soviet-style Communism, by contrast, corrupted socialism “by equating it with a totalitarian denial … Read More
Dewey, Piaget, and Frosted Mini Wheats
March 8, 2021 Dewey, Piaget, and Frosted Mini Wheats By Alfie Kohn In case you are not familiar with the cereal called Shredded Wheat, it is basically hay. Many of us who are members of the species Homo sapiens, rather than, say, Equus ferus, do not find hay appetizing, even when it is pressed into small packets and sold in … Read More
The Tests Are Lousy, So How Could the Scores Be Meaningful?
December 19, 2020 The Tests Are Lousy, So How Could the Scores Be Meaningful? By Alfie Kohn Way before Waze, I listened to traffic reports on my car radio whenever I had to drive to the airport. Over time I came to realize that the information they broadcast was frequently wrong: I’d be caught in a jam on a … Read More
Fame Is the Name of the Game
October 16, 2020 Fame Is the Name of the Game A Meditation on Why So Many People Dream of Being (or Even Just Meeting) Celebrities By Alfie Kohn “The question I get asked more than any other question: ‘If you had it to do again, would you have done it?’” Trump said of running for president. “The answer is, yeah, … Read More
All of Us Are Smarter Than Any of Us
September 23, 2020 All of Us Are Smarter Than Any of Us By Alfie Kohn The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively against both other such wholes and against its social and … Read More
Out of Control
May 21, 2020 Out of Control Taking Liberties with Autonomy During a Pandemic By Alfie Kohn Warren Buffett famously commented that when the tide goes out, we can finally see who has been swimming naked. By the same token, when a pandemic arrives, we are confronted with a vivid display of just what kind of society we’ve really had all … Read More