NEW YORK TIMES June 16, 2019 Can Everyone Be Excellent? By Alfie Kohn [This is an expanded version of the published article, which was titled “Why Can’t Everyone Get an A?”] I was having dinner with Deborah Meier, the eminent educator, when our conversation turned, as it often does, to school reform. For a generation now, that phrase has come … Read More
Civics Education — The Safe Kind and the Subversive Kind
Edit WASHINGTON POST December 23, 2018 Civics Education — The Safe Kind and the Subversive Kind By Alfie Kohn [This is an expanded version of the published article, which was titled “How Should We Make Sure Our Kids Learn to Be Good Citizens?”] Some years ago, a group of teachers from Florida traveled to what was then the U.S.S.R. to … Read More
Rewards Are Still Bad News 25 Years Later
NEW YORK TIMES October 28, 2018 Rewards Are Still Bad News (25 Years Later) By Alfie Kohn [This is a slightly expanded version of the published article, which was titled “Science Confirms It: People Are Not Pets.”] The field of social psychology is sometimes accused of doing no more than ratifying common sense, so it’s worth paying attention when its … Read More
It’s Not About Behavior
EDUCATION WEEK September 5, 2018 It’s Not About Behavior By Alfie Kohn Plenty of policies and programs limit our ability to do right by children. But perhaps the most restrictive virtual straitjacket that educators face is behaviorism — a psychological theory that would have us focus exclusively on what can be seen and measured, that ignores or dismisses inner experience … Read More
Cooperative Conflict: Neither Concurrence Nor Debate
EDUCATION WEEK September 13, 2017 Cooperative Conflict Neither Concurrence Nor Debate By Alfie Kohn It’s been said that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who think in binary terms and those who don’t. When students are given something to read and then asked whether they “agree or disagree” with the author, they’re being trained as dichotomizers … Read More
Raising an UnTrump
SALON August 27, 2017 Raising an UnTrump By Alfie Kohn When the words “Trump” and “children” appear in the same sentence, it’s often because the writer is trying to figure out how to protect the latter from the former. How do we shield our offspring not only from what this man does (particularly if the youngsters in question are at … Read More
On Punishment for Bullying — and Punishment AS Bullying
EDUCATION WEEK September 07, 2016 On Punishment for Bullying — and Punishment as Bullying By Alfie Kohn Bullying at school has attracted an enormous amount of attention, spurring academic studies and popular books, regulations and training sessions for educators. By now its status as a serious problem is widely acknowledged, as it should be. We can never go back … Read More
Men Are Still Paying for Women on Dates?
BOSTON GLOBE April 17, 2016 Men Are Still Paying for Women on Dates? By Alfie Kohn [NOTE: This is the complete version of an essay that was abridged for publication in the Boston Globe‘s Sunday Magazine.] Imagine that a committed feminist woke up last week from a decades-long coma. She looks around and finds that considerable consciousness-raising has taken place … Read More
Trumped
SALON March 28, 2016 Trumped What You-Know-Who’s Success Says About Our Country’s Addiction to Competition By Alfie Kohn There is one overriding story this election season, and it concerns how Donald Trump has confounded pundits who assumed he was the kind of joke people would laugh at rather than vote for. It’s the story of how the media cover him … Read More
Clicking for Love
BOSTON GLOBE January 10, 2016 Clicking for Love The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating By Alfie Kohn [NOTE: This is the complete version of an essay that was greatly abridged for publication in the Boston Globe‘s Sunday Magazine.] It was when the first woman I’d exchanged messages with invited me to give her a call that I suddenly … Read More