Dangerous Ideas

Authorities question Alfie Kohn’s questioning of authority

By Tim Johnson · Wednesday, September 30, 2009

“Most books and seminars for parents offer advice for getting children to be ‘well behaved’ and to do what they’re told,” observes education critic Alfie Kohn. “If we think beyond the current moment, however, most of us would like our kids to grow into courageous, assertive, moral people—independent thinkers who are willing to fight injustices.”

Perhaps; but the thought of two dozen bright, assertive young minds ready to assert themselves in one small classroom is enough to make teachers awake screaming at night. Maybe that’s why Bellingham School District thought it was safer to refuse to circulate information about Kohn’s Oct. 9 visit to Bellingham.

Kohn has been described by Time magazine as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores.” Author of 11 book, his criticisms of competition and rewards have helped to shape the thinking of educators—as well as parents and managers—across the country and abroad. Kohn believes many of the education practices so overburden young children he urges parents to take a stand against it.

The acting director of Bellingham School District, Sherrie Brown, thought these calls for revolution sounded in conflict with district plans and goals and refused to distribute information about Kohn’s lecture.

“Apparently, the program talks about the elimination of homework and grades,” district secretary Marilyn Grams explained. “We do require homework, so it was felt the information was inconsistent with our mi-sion.” Brown was unavailable for comment.

Kohn scoffs.

“My approach is that what matters most is what helps kids to become deep thinkers who love learning, so it’s distressing to learn Bellingham School District finds that inconsistent with its mission. But it’s even more discouraging that would attempt to silence a speaker who sees things differently.”

Cascadia Weekly: Is it common that people are unnerved by what you advocate? It seems to break the rules.

Alfie Kohn: Unnerving, perhaps; but to the point of refusing to tell teachers and parents there’s an opportunity to hear a different a different perspective? That is very unusual, and I would be outraged if I was a parent or teacher affiliated with that district.

CW: Tell me about your perspective on learning.

AK: Well, I begin with the notion that we ought to be more interested in helping kids to become excited about ideas than raising test scores, or in making students jump through hoops.

I love to see classrooms where the curriculum is organized around kids’ questions about themselves and the world, where problems and projects drive the investigation across academic disciplines, rather than by memorizing forgettable facts and the practice of skills by rote. I’m not opposed to facts and skills, but I think they should be learned in a context and for a purpose.

CW: It sounds as if you’re trying to foster curiosity.

AK: Curiosity doesn’t have to be fostered; we just have to make sure we don’t kill it. Kids come in with a curiosity, with a thousand questions to know how things work. Unfortunately, research has found that traditional schooling tends to dampen that curiosity so that kids have less of a disposition to discover and learn by the end of elementary school than they did at the beginning.

CW: How does that dampening occur?

AK: Number one, by excluding kids from decisions about what will be learned and when and how and why. Just like adults, kids like to have some say in what they do all day. They not only are happier when they are consulted, they tend to do better quality learning.

Number two, we teach kids that learning isn’t only a goal in its own right, it’s a means to the end of getting some goodie—such as getting a sticker, or someone else’s approval, or—worst of all—being able to triumph another kid when we set them against one another. This is why the best schools do not use grade, because research overwhelming finds that when kids are focused on trying to get better grades they become less excited about what they’re learning and they learn it in a more superficial fashion.

The next way we kill that curiosity is by turning learning into something is measurable by tests, even though we know good thinking can’t be reduced to merely to measurable numbers.

Finally, by treating kids as isolated selves, as individuals stationed at his or her own desk, rather than creating a community of learners so that kids can prod and challenge and learn from one another.

CW: And yet you’ve championed a fierce spirit of the individual to think critically.

AK: No; I don’t think critical thinking requires individualism at all. In fact, I’m more interested in creating a community of critical thinkers.
It’s a common misperception in this country that in order to challenge authority, to be skeptical of claims that are made, to move off in new and innovative directions, it’s all about individuals.

In fact, when you put critical thinking and choice together with a community, you get something called democracy, which is unfamiliar to people in this country and certainly in our schools.

The majority of schools, sadly, are more about getting kids to comply with rules, whether or not those rules are reasonable, to memorize facts on standardized tests, even though the costs to kids and ultimately to our whole society are painfully high.

If you begin with a few basic premises about taking kids seriously and taking thinking seriously, as well as wanting to work with students to solve problems rather than doing things to the students to make them obey authority, then you are led to question a whole bunch of practices that we’ve been encouraged to take for granted—such as schooling that is based on lectures, worksheets, textbooks, homework, grades and tests.

CW: With classroom sizes growing and school budgets shrinking, can schools take this more open, proactive approach to learning? I suspect many educators might agree with your approach if the resources were there.

AK: We have plenty of evidence to the contrary from all over the world. I believe classes should be small when possible—and more importantly schools should be small—but some schools have managed to make this kind of learning happen despite limited budgets.

There are schools in New York City under terrible budget limitations. They have only so many staff members and so they’ve decided to cut down on the number of administrators and specialists in order to have a lower student-teacher ratio. They have set some priorities about the way money is spent. For example, they are not going to fritter it away on packaged curriculum materials when they can use it to buy real books—the kind you find in libraries.

It is certainly possible, without increasing costs, to give kids more say about what they’re learning and for the learning to be richer and more engaging, even if the class size is higher than we’d like.

CW: Do you find educators surprised by your approach to learning?

AK: A lot depends on whether I am talking to classroom teachers or people higher up the hierarchy.

The idea, for example, of a standardized curriculum enforced by standardized tests becomes more appealing to you the farther removed you are from real children in real classrooms. State decision makers and legislators are far more enamored of this “accountability” fad with its corporate-style, test-driven approach to school reform than are district superintendents. And so on, down the chain.

CW: You said “fad.” You called it a “corporate” approach.

AK: Yes, it’s a series of interlocking rewards and punishments to mandate a curriculum by authorities and companies far removed from classrooms, and to confuse higher test scores with better learning. Elements of this have been in vogue, on and off for many decades, but it has picked up steam in the last two decades, to the point where there are some teachers who cannot even remember a time when the goal was to enrich thinking rather than to raise scores on terrible multiple choice tests, like the WASL.

Some of us in the late ’90s thought we had hit bottom, and then the floor broke and we found ourselves in a basement we didn’t know existed. What should be called the “Many Child Left Behind” act is a punitive act created by people who were primarily opponents of public schooling. They created an extremely effective argument for privatizing the way we are educating our children by hurting the schools in need of help and setting unreachable goals that benefit no one except private tutoring agencies.

CW: You are ultimately arguing that invigorating education can make better citizens.

AK: Yes, if by “citizen” you mean people who are active participants in a democratic society. As opposed to “docile employees” who will make sure Microsoft’s profits exceed that of its competitors.

Whenever I hear people talk about education’s role in “competitiveness in the global economy,” I start to sweat. I find it deeply offensive. And the practical consequences of framing education as no more than a means toward toward greater profitability is devastating, framed in purely economic terms, when the entire thrust of education—every parent’s hope for his or her child—should be toward creating a richer, fuller personal life.