AMERICAN HEALTH April 1993 Back to Nurture By Alfie Kohn Neckties narrow and then widen again as the years go by; today’s hot hairstyle will soon be painfully passe. Chances are such phases do not faze you. But in the field of science, including the study of human behavior, you may prefer to think there are no passing fads, no … Read More
Resistance to Cooperative Learning: Making Sense of Its Deletion and Dilution (*)
JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 1992 – vol. 174, no. 2, pages 38-56 Resistance to Cooperative Learning Making Sense of Its Deletion and Dilution By Alfie Kohn [My teacher is] always [going] on about help thy neighbour and [all] that [– but] you try and do that in his lessons and you’re out. — Dave, a 14-year-old student (quoted in Dunn, Rudduck, … Read More
Competition vs. Excellence
NEW YORK TIMES April 26, 1991 Competition vs. Excellence By Alfie Kohn Even before we examine each provision of President Bush’s new proposal to make our educational system more competitive, we should challenge the premise of his plan. The trouble with our schools is that they are already much too competitive. The very word “competitiveness,” lately a favorite of educators, economists, … Read More
Value Human Life, Not American Power
BOSTON GLOBE March 16, 1991 Value Human Life, Not American Power By Alfie Kohn Stop the next ten people you see and ask them how many lives were lost in the Vietnam War. Chances are you’ll get answers of about 50,000. This, however, is just the number of Americans who died during the decade-long invasion of that country. Nearly two … Read More
Group Grade Grubbing versus Cooperative LEARNING
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