PHI DELTA KAPPAN April 2004 Test Today, Privatize Tomorrow Using Accountability to “Reform” Public Schools to Death By Alfie Kohn I just about fell off my desk chair the other day when I came across my own name in an essay by a conservative economist who specializes in educational issues. The reason for my astonishment is that I was described … Read More
Rethinking Character Education: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom about Camp and Kids
CAMPING MAGAZINE September/October 2003 Rethinking Character Education: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom About Camping & Kids By Alfie Kohn A substantial number of people believe that camps can do more than provide an opportunity to have fun: They can also promote children’s social and moral growth. This explains the growing interest among American Camping Association members in the movement known as … Read More
Professors Who Profess (**)
KAPPA DELTA PI RECORD Spring 2003 Professors Who Profess Making a Difference as Scholar-Activists By Alfie Kohn The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free … Read More
What Does It Mean to Be Well-Educated? (**)
PRINCIPAL LEADERSHIP March 2003 [updated September 2015] What Does It Mean to Be Well-Educated? By Alfie Kohn No one should offer pronouncements about what it means to be well-educated without meeting my ex-wife. When I met her, she was at Harvard, putting the finishing touches on her doctoral dissertation in anthropology. A year later, having spent her entire life in … Read More
Almost There, But Not Quite (**)
EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP March 2003 Almost There, But Not Quite By Alfie Kohn The late educational researcher John Nicholls once remarked to me that he had met a lot of administrators who “don’t want to hear a buzz of excitement in classrooms — they want to hear nothing.” His implication was that some teachers strive to keep tight control over students … Read More
The 500-Pound Gorilla (**)
PHI DELTA KAPPAN October 2002 The 500-Pound Gorilla By Alfie Kohn The best reason to give a child a good school. . .is so that child will have a happy childhood, and not so that it will help IBM in competing with Sony. . . There is something ethically embarrassing about resting a national agenda on the basis of sheer … Read More
Education’s Rotten Apples (**)
EDUCATION WEEK September 18, 2002 Education’s Rotten Apples By Alfie Kohn Like other people, educators often hold theories about how the world works, or how one ought to act, that are never named, never checked for accuracy, never even consciously recognized. One of the most popular of these theories is a very appealing blend of pragmatism and relativism that might … Read More
Education’s Different Drummer
WASHINGTON POST January 9, 2001 Education’s Different Drummer Alfie Kohn Is Marching Against Standardized Learning, and He Has Gained a Nationwide Following By Jay Mathews Washington Post Staff Writer One day in 1967, a sweet-faced, bespectacled fifth-grader at Leroy D. Fienberg Elementary School in Miami Beach was given a class assignment. No one remembers what it was about, which is … Read More
On Teaching Reading, Spelling, and Related Subjects
Excerpts from The Schools Our Children Deserve (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999) On Teaching Reading, Spelling, and Related Subjects Half Truths About Whole Language By Alfie Kohn “Kids aren’t learning how to read these days because ivory-tower ideologues have eliminated the teaching of necessary basic skills in favor of feel-good, PC fads like Whole Language. We’d do a lot better if we … Read More
Moving Beyond Facts, Skills, and Right Answers
From Chapter 3: “Getting Teaching and Learning Wrong” in The Schools Our Children Deserve (Houghton Mifflin, 1999) Moving Beyond Facts, Skills, and Right Answers By Alfie Kohn The trouble with the Tougher Standards movement isn’t limited to its failure to understand the costs of overemphasizing achievement. The movement is also vulnerable by virtue of the way it defines achievement. The vast majority of policy makers … Read More