October 4, 2015 The Back-to-School-Night Speech We’d Like to Hear* By Alfie Kohn Is this working? [taps microphone] I do believe it is! OK, if everyone can please find a seat, we’d like to get started. Thanks so much for coming out tonight! We’ve reserved plenty of time for discussion — obviously I’m not going to talk at you all … Read More
Cheerful to a Fault: “Positive” Practices with Negative Implications
July 11, 2015 Cheerful to a Fault “Positive” Practices with Negative Implications By Alfie Kohn We live in a smiley-face, keep-your-chin-up, look-on-the-bright-side culture. At the risk of being labeled a professional party pooper, I’d like to suggest that accentuating the positive isn’t always a wise course of action where children are concerned. I say that not because I’ve joined the … Read More
What’s the Real Purpose of Classroom Management?
June 25, 2015 What’s the Real Purpose of Classroom Management? By Alfie Kohn Everyone knows why classroom management skills are considered a critical part of teacher training. The reason we need to minimize “misbehavior” and get students to show up, sit down, and pay attention is so we can teach them stuff. That proposition is so obvious that it’s … Read More
Learning as a Sandwich: Revisiting the Ingenuity (and Radicalism) of K-W-L
June 2, 2015 Learning as a Sandwich Revisiting the Ingenuity (and Radicalism) of K-W-L By Alfie Kohn I believe it was Dale Carnegie who first counseled public speakers to “tell the audience what you’re going to say . . . say it . . . then tell them what you’ve said.” This advice, which presumably appeared in his book How … Read More
The Wrong Way to Get People to Do the Right Thing
May 12, 2015 The Wrong Way to Get People to Do the Right Thing By Alfie Kohn [This essay is adapted from The Brighter Side of Human Nature, which contains the complete references to research cited here.] Our culture may sing the praises of the heroically selfless, yet it also seems to disdain the very idea of helping. We … Read More
The Grass Moment
April 23, 2015 The Grass Moment Helping Kids to Become Reflective Rebels By Alfie Kohn For the last several years I’ve been hacking away at a tangle of deeply conservative beliefs about children and parenting that have somehow come to be accepted as the conventional wisdom in our culture: that parents are too permissive and yet, at the same time, … Read More
Evidence? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Evidence!
April 7, 2015 Evidence? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Evidence! By Alfie Kohn Have you ever suspected that much of what you do for a living is an extended exercise in missing the point? I’ve spent many years challenging claims about the benefits of rewarding or praising children (when they act the way we want) and punishing them (when they … Read More
Four Reasons to Worry About “Personalized Learning”
February 23, 2015 Four Reasons to Worry About “Personalized Learning” By Alfie Kohn Tocqueville’s observations about the curious version of democracy that Americans were cultivating in the 1830s have served as a touchstone for social scientists ever since. One sociologist writes about the continued relevance of what Tocqueville noticed way back then, particularly the odd fact that we cherish our … Read More
Progressive Labels for Regressive Practices
January 31, 2015 Progressive Labels for Regressive Practices How Key Terms in Education Have Been Co-opted By Alfie Kohn “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” — Lewis Caroll, Through the Looking Glass “Whole language” (WL), a collaborative, meaning-based approach … Read More
Why the Best Teachers Don’t Give Tests (##)
October 30, 2014 Why the Best Teachers Don’t Give Tests By Alfie Kohn Frankly, I’m baffled by the number of educators who are adamantly opposed to standardized testing yet raise no objection to other practices that share important features with such testing. For starters, consider those lists of specific, prescriptive curriculum standards to which the tests are yoked. Here we … Read More