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

Do Religious People Help More? Not So You’d Notice

PSYCHOLOGY TODAY December 1989 Do Religious People Help More? Not So You’d Notice By Alfie Kohn [This is a slightly expanded version of the published article.]  In a society that teaches us to associate morality with religion, it is easy to assume that a strong relationship exists between piety and pity, between God and good. After all, the sacred texts of … Read More

Altruism Within Egoism (Book Review)

THE NATION May 29, 1989 Altruism Within Egoism By Alfie Kohn Review of: PASSIONS WITHIN REASON: The Strategic Role of the Emotions By Robert H. Frank.  Norton.  304 pp. Also discussed in this review: ECONOMICS FOR A CIVILIZED SOCIETY.  By Greg Davidson and Paul Davidson. Norton.  213 pp. THE MORAL DIMENSION: Toward a New Economics.  By Amitai Etzioni. Free Press.  … Read More