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
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
Beyond Selfishness
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY October 1988 Beyond Selfishness By Alfie Kohn You realize you left your wallet on the bus and you give up hope of ever seeing it again. But someone calls that evening asking how to return the wallet to you. Two toddlers are roughhousing when one suddenly begins to cry. The other child rushes to fetch his own security … Read More
Paris Slide Show
BOSTON GLOBE June 19, 1988 Paris Slide Show By Alfie Kohn Somebody want to get the lights, please? OK. This first one was taken on the Air France 747 that conveyed me and my two carry-on bags across the Atlantic. That elderly woman on my left (your right) spent most of the journey rapidly clicking her knitting needles and chattering … Read More
Are Humans Innately Aggressive?
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY June 1988 Are Humans Innately Aggressive? By Alfie Kohn Sigmund Freud tried to cure Viennese women of their neuroses, and Konrad Lorenz made his reputation studying birds, but the two men shared a belief that has become lodged in the popular consciousness. The belief is that we have within us, naturally and spontaneously, a reservoir of aggressive energy. … Read More
Mind Over Matter: Inside the Christian Science Church
NEW ENGLAND MONTHLY March 1988 Mind Over Matter Inside the Christian Science Church By Alfie Kohn A young man at the back of the room stands up, his pink shirt sleeves rolled back from his wrists, and everyone turns around to see him and hear his story. He describes how he awoke in the middle of the night several years … Read More
No Contest
INC. Magazine November 1987 No Contest By Alfie Kohn [This is a slightly expanded version of the original article.] Long before anyone was talking about team-building or Theory Z — less than a decade after World War II, in fact – a sociologist named Peter Blau compared two groups of interviewers at a public employment agency. Those in the first … Read More
The Case Against Competition
WORKING MOTHER September 1987 The Case Against Competition By Alfie Kohn When it comes to competition, we Americans typically recognize only two legitimate positions: enthusiastic support and qualified support. The first view holds that the more we immerse our children (and ourselves) in rivalry, the better. Competition builds character and produces excellence. The second stance admits that our society has … Read More