August 23, 2018 Oprah and I By Alfie Kohn My book Punished by Rewards was recently published in a 25th-anniversary edition — which must mean that I wrote the original version when I was in fourth grade. The new edition has a 30-page Afterword (not counting approximately 9,250 footnotes) featuring research on the topic that was published since my previous … Read More
“…And I Turned Out Just Fine!”
March 21, 2018 “. . . And I Turned Out Just Fine!” By Alfie Kohn If you’re going to question people’s thinking, it’s helpful to give them a couple of options: a gentle challenge in case they’re easily unsettled and a more pointed challenge for those who don’t mind really digging into their assumptions. Consider, for example, an announcement that … Read More
The Case for Abolishing Class Rank
December 12, 2016 The Case for Abolishing Class Rank By Alfie Kohn When students are rated with letter or number grades, research shows they’re apt to think in a shallower fashion – and to lose interest in what they’re learning – as compared with students who aren’t graded at all. Alternative methods for reporting student progress are not only less … Read More
The Bonus Effect
September 27, 2016 The Bonus Effect One Kind of Interest that Rewards Don’t Kill By Alfie Kohn For nearly half a century, research has raised troubling questions about the practice of dangling rewards in front of people to get them to do what we want. It doesn’t matter whether the people in question are male or female, children or adults. … Read More
Do Our Expectations of Kids Aim Too High or Too Low?
September 6, 2016 Do Our Expectations of Kids Aim Too High or Too Low? By Alfie Kohn “Old-school” parenting and teaching are often distinguished by a failure to understand what children are capable of doing or understanding, or to provide the support they need and the respect they deserve. But does that mean kids are being underestimated — or overestimated? … Read More
The Failure of Failure
June 23, 2016 The Failure of Failure By Alfie Kohn A few years ago, two researchers in Singapore published a study that compared the effect of traditional and progressive instruction in middle-school math. The traditional approach consisted of having students listen to lectures and individually solve practice problems with clearly defined right answers. The progressive approach was defined by collaboration, … Read More
Why Lots of Love (or Motivation) Isn’t Enough
April 23, 2016 Why Lots of Love (or Motivation) Isn’t Enough By Alfie Kohn I get a kick out of spotting invisible threads that connect disparate theories and lines of research. Sometimes I’ll even notice a pattern (after the fact) in my own essays about different topics — which can be gratifying until I realize that the common denominator is … Read More
“Your Hand’s Not Raised? Too Bad: I’m Calling on You Anyway”
January 29, 2016 “Your Hand’s Not Raised? Too Bad: I’m Calling on You Anyway” By Alfie Kohn Doctors in training call it “pimping.” A medical student or junior resident is abruptly put on the spot, sometimes during patient rounds, as an instructor fires off difficult questions about anatomy, diagnostic protocols, or surgical procedures.[1] The practice is defended in pretty … Read More
Clicking for Love
BOSTON GLOBE January 10, 2016 Clicking for Love The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating By Alfie Kohn [NOTE: This is the complete version of an essay that was greatly abridged for publication in the Boston Globe‘s Sunday Magazine.] It was when the first woman I’d exchanged messages with invited me to give her a call that I suddenly … Read More
Learning Together
No Contest: The Case Against Competition, rev. ed. (Houghton Mifflin, 1992) Chapter 10 Learning Together A Defense and Analysis of Cooperative Learning By Alfie Kohn I consider…the tendency toward a selfish individualism one of the strongest counts against our customary…sit-alone-at-your-own-desk procedure….Whole-hearted purposeful activity in a social situation as the typical unit of school procedure is the best guarantee of … Read More