May 2009 More Evidence That Incentives Fail By Alfie Kohn Punished by Rewards is surely the only book from which excerpts were simultaneously published in Parents magazine and the Harvard Business Review – evidence of how pervasive is our culture’s embrace of pop-behaviorism. In the family, the workplace, and the classroom, more-powerful people try to control less-powerful people by dangling some sort of reward … Read More
Teachers Who Have Stopped Assigning Homework
September 2008 Teachers Who Have Stopped Assigning Homework By Alfie Kohn Is it really possible to completely eliminate homework – or at least to assign it rarely, only when it’s truly needed – even in high school? We keep hearing from educators who say it’s not only possible but preferable to do so. Some of these folks were influenced by … Read More
Teachers Who Refuse to Hand Out the Tests
May 2008 Teachers Who Refuse to Hand Out the Tests By Alfie Kohn What if they gave a test and nobody came? Or what if all the students came, but the teachers refused to give them a test? The civil rights movement succeeded not only because good laws were eventually passed (mandating desegregation) but because ordinary people refused to obey … Read More
Gleanings #3: Test Boycotts, Death to the Syllabus, and Why Secretaries of Education Are Never Educators
April 2008 Gleanings #3 Test Boycotts, Death to the Syllabus, and Why Secretaries of Education Are Never Educators By Alfie Kohn MORE GLEANINGS – that is, writings from various sources likely to be of interest to anyone drawn to the work on this website. This month, we feature an article, a website, a quote, and news of an important campaign … Read More
Are Fewer Young People Reading for Pleasure?
November 2007 Are Fewer Young People Reading for Pleasure? By Alfie Kohn Several years ago, a teacher who regularly invited her students to “drop everything and read” their favorite books was asked by a colleague whether she was still setting aside class time for that purpose. She replied, “We haven’t been doing any reading since we started preparing the kids … Read More
Gleanings #2: Fresh Writings on the Achievement Gap
September 2007 Gleanings #2 Fresh Writings on the Achievement Gap By Alfie Kohn Almost as much as one yearns for a solution to the achievement gap, one searches for a fresh way of thinking about this problem. Most of what’s published seems awfully familiar by now, so it’s worth celebrating the exceptions. In this installment of the occasional feature called … Read More
Parrot Math
June 2007 Parrot Math By Alfie Kohn “Hey, if it was bad enough for me, it’s bad enough for my kids”: Many of us cheerfully acknowledge that we’ve always hated math or were never any good at it. In the next breath, though, we may insist that our children be taught the same way we were – with an emphasis … Read More
Gleanings #1: Resources on Inclusion, Gender, Classroom Management, and Assignments That Require No Thinking
April 2007 Gleanings #1 Resources on Inclusion, Gender, Classroom Management, and Assignments That Require No Thinking By Alfie Kohn GLEANINGS – A new feature in this space that will appear from time to time: Mentions of (and snippets from) articles and books written by various people — some just published, some discovered belatedly – and likely to be of interest … Read More
Close the Book on ‘Book It!’
March 2007 Close the Book on ‘Book It!’ By Alfie Kohn I once asked the late John Nicholls, an expert on motivation and achievement, for his assessment of Pizza Hut’s “Book It!” program, which uses fast food as a reward for reading. Nicholls dryly observed that the most likely result would be “a lot of fat kids who don’t like … Read More
Is The Homework Myth Popular with Students? Well, Sure. What’s Your Point?
December 2006 Is The Homework Myth Popular with Students? Well, Sure. What’s Your Point? By Alfie Kohn “Boy, I’ll bet you’re real popular with kids!” is one of the more common responses I’ve heard from reporters after having done more than 90 TV, radio, and print interviews to discuss The Homework Myth. I begin by admitting that he has indeed received … Read More