FAQ

When is Alfie Kohn coming to my town to speak?

Have a look at the Schedule page for a list of upcoming presentations – and feel free to check back periodically:  It’s updated whenever a new engagement is confirmed.

Which of Kohn’s books are available in other languages?

There seems to be little rhyme or reason to the process by which foreign publishers license the rights to translate books.  Here’s the complete list:

• No Contest has been translated into German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Thai, Bulgarian, and Polish.
• Punished by Rewards has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, and Bahasa Melayu.
• The Schools Our Children Deserve has been translated into Hebrew, Malay, and Bahasa Indonesia.
• You Know What They Say… has been translated into Dutch and Swedish.
• Beyond Discipline has been translated into Spanish, Hebrew, Korean, Arabic, and Bulgarian.
• Unconditional Parenting has been (or is being) translated into Spanish (in Mexico as well as in Spain), Bahasa Indonesia, German, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Polish, Italian, and Romanian.
• The Homework Myth is being translated into Chinese and Spanish.

Can you recommend a school near where I live that’s consistent with your principles?

A.K. writes:

While I’ve visited a number of schools, I haven’t seen nearly enough, particularly in the last few years, to be able to recommend one in any given geographic area.  I’ve had to content myself with laying out (and defending) the criteria for good educational practices — and leaving it to others who agree with those criteria to apply them to schools where they live.

To the best of my knowledge, moreover, no one else has attempted to create a list of progressive schools. I suspect this is partly because of a lack of consensus about what constitutes a progressive school and partly because even if we could agree on the criteria, most schools fulfill some but not all of them. For example, you might find a school that (a) brilliantly illustrates what it means to create a sense of caring community (rather than setting children against one another in competition), while (b) doing an OK but not exemplary job of bringing kids into the decision-making process, and (c) offering a distressingly traditional math curriculum featuring worksheets and textbooks.

Why isn’t there more personal information about Kohn on the bio page?

A.K. writes:

A surprising amount of mail has been arriving lately with requests for details about my personal history.  Some people are simply curious.  Some ask because they think this information will be useful for a class assignment.  And some seem angry about what I’ve written and appear to be hoping to find some fact about me that will make them feel better about dismissing my ideas.

We live in a society where the lives of celebrities are laid bare in magazines and television shows, and where people have come to feel entitled to information about the childhoods and private lives of complete strangers who are public or semi-public figures – or even just authors.  This sense of entitlement is actually rather odd, when you stop to think about it.  In any case, I’m more interested in calling attention to ideas than to the particulars of my background.  That’s why my website is dedicated to the former rather than to the latter.  I’d rather that my arguments were judged on their merits rather than filtered through a biographical lens.