July 20, 2012 Lowering the Temperature on Claims of “Summer Learning Loss” Why are we so nervous about giving kids a break from school? By Alfie Kohn The idea of summer learning loss—the implication being that it’s risky to give kids a three-month vacation from school because they’ll forget everything they were taught—has become the media’s favorite seasonally specific education … Read More
What Makes a Terrific Parent?
April 23, 2012 What Makes a Terrific Parent? By Alfie Kohn If you decided to have a child, presumably it was because you wanted to be a parent and anticipated that the experience would be fulfilling. You did it for you. But the child’s arrival demands a radical shift: Now you must do things for him or her. Moreover, you … Read More
Criticizing (Common Criticisms of) Praise (##)
February 3, 2012 Criticizing (Common Criticisms of) Praise By Alfie Kohn Over the last few years I’ve had the odd experience of seeing my work cited with approval by people whose views on the issue in question are diametrically opposed to my own. The issue I have in mind is praise. I’m troubled by it, as are the people who quote … Read More
The Risks and Potential of Required Community Service
January 9, 2012 The Risks and Potential of Required Community Service By Alfie Kohn Q. We are facing a proposal to require community service for all high school students. I am very concerned about the mixed message this will send to our students about freely giving of themselves in service to others. What are your thoughts on community service as a requirement … Read More
Five Not-So-Obvious Propositions About Play (##)
November 15, 2011 Five Not-So-Obvious Propositions About Play By Alfie Kohn Children should have plenty of opportunities to play. Even young children have too few such opportunities these days, particularly in school settings. These two propositions — both of them indisputable and important — have been offered many times.1 The second one in particular reflects the “cult of rigor” at … Read More
Whoever Said There’s No Such Thing As a Stupid Question Never Looked Carefully at a Standardized Test (##)
September 16, 2011 Whoever Said There’s No Such Thing As a Stupid Question Never Looked Carefully at a Standardized Test By Alfie Kohn It can’t be repeated often enough: Standardized tests are very poor measures of the intellectual capabilities that matter most, and that’s true because of how they’re designed, not just because of how they’re used. Like other writers, … Read More
What We Don’t Know About Our Students — And Why (##)
September 7, 2011 What We Don’t Know About Our Students — And Why By Alfie Kohn There’s a scene near the beginning of Small Change (also known as Pocket Money), Truffaut’s übercharming movie about children of all ages, in which a teacher makes each of her students recite a passage from a Molière play — a test of both memory and dramatic skill. … Read More
Teaching Strategies That Work! (Just Don’t Ask “Work to Do What?”) (##)
August 10, 2011 Teaching Strategies That Work! (Just Don’t Ask “Work to Do What?”) By Alfie Kohn So here’s the dilemma for someone who writes about education: Certain critical cautions and principles need to be mentioned again and again because policy makers persist in ignoring them, yet faithful readers will eventually tire of the repetition. Consider, for example, the reminder … Read More
Why Are Some People Always Late? And Other Human Puzzles
July 25, 2011 Why Are Some People Always Late? And Other Human Puzzles By Alfie Kohn I often find myself unable to let go of questions that don’t seem to give most people any pause at all. For example, why do we cry at weddings? The more I think about this, the less certain I am about the answer — or, rather, … Read More
How to Write an Article About Current Parenting Styles
June 30, 2011 How to Write an Article About Current Parenting Styles By Alfie Kohn 1. To maximize the chance of getting your article published, be careful to make exactly the same argument that shows up in every other article on the topic. It sounds like this: “Parents today refuse to set limits for their children. Instead of disciplining them, … Read More