Alfie Kohn





Introduction
Alfie Kohn is a leading, insightful, and sometimes controversial force in working to improve our education system. He has written and spoken extensively about his insights into many of the very challenging problems in our educational system.

This Page provides an introduction to some of Kohn's ideas and publications.

Who's Cheating Whom
Kohn, Alfie (October, 2007). Who's cheating whom? Phi Delta Kappan. Retrieved 9/21/08: http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/cheating.htm. An audio interview based on this article is also available.

Quoting from the article:


 * Cheating is more common when students experience the academic tasks they’ve been given as boring, irrelevant, or overwhelming. In two studies of ninth and tenth graders, for example, “Perceived likelihood of cheating was uniformly relatively high . . . when a teacher’s pedagogy was portrayed as poor.”[6]  To put this point positively, cheating is relatively rare in classrooms where the learning is genuinely engaging and meaningful to students and where a commitment to exploring significant ideas hasn’t been eclipsed by a single-minded emphasis on “rigor.”

Kohn takes a dim view of competition as opposed to collaboration. An overview of his insights and argument is available in his 1987 article [http://www.starbucksunion.org/node/311. No Contest.] There he sites considerable research evidence on benefits of student collaboration.

The collaboration versus competition issue is made more complex as it becomes easier to make use of computer networks to collaborate with people and with machines. In a typical "real world" work setting, a worker is free to (indeed, often encouraged to) collaborate with other people and make use of the stored collected knowledge of the human race. Contrast this with (quoting from the Who's Cheating Whom article:


 * The problem, however, is that, aside from the occasional sanctioned group project, the default condition in most American classrooms – particularly where homework and testing are concerned – is reflected in that familiar injunction heard from elementary school teachers: “I want to see what you can do, not what your neighbor can do.”  (Or, if the implications were spelled out more precisely, “I want to see what you can do all by yourself, deprived of the resources and social support that characterize most well-functioning real-world environments, rather than seeing how much more you and your neighbors could accomplish together.”)  Whether, and under what circumstances, it might make more sense to have students learn, and to assess their performance, in groups is an issue ripe for analysis and disagreement.  Alas, most collaboration is simply classified as cheating.  End of discussion.

Notice the reference to group projects (project-based learning). PBL can be a good environment for teach collaboration among students and helping students learn to make effective of global information resources.

Here is a further quote from the article:


 * In 2006, a front-page story in the New York Times described how instructors and administrators are struggling to catch college students who use ingenious high-tech methods of cheating. In every example cited in the article, the students were figuring out ways to consult their notes during exams; in one case, a student was caught using a computer spell-check program.

Once one moves outside of a "closed book" school testing environment, it is common place for people to make use of computerized spell checker. Moreover, dyslexic students may well be allowed to use a spell checker as part of an accommodation to their learning disability.

Our educational system talks about authentic content and authentic assessment. However, it has a long way to go before it routinely allows open networked computer as a resource when being assessed. Note, however, such pen networked computer is now widely accepted (indeed, assumed) in doing homework assignment.

Choices for Children
Kohn, Alfie (September 1993). Choices for children: Why and how to let students decide. Phi Delta Kappan. Retrieved 9/21/08: http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/cfc.htm.

The article begins with the description that fits many students who display such symptoms as "disengagement and apathy—or, conversely, thoughtlessness and aggression."

Continuing the quote:


 * Of course, no sooner is this sketch of a hypothetical student begun than we recognize it as a depiction of real life. The fact is that students act this way every day. But now let us ask what we know from research and experience in the workplace about the cause of burnout. The best predictor, it turns out, is not too much work, too little time, or too little compensation. Rather, it is powerlessness—a lack of control over what one is doing. [Bold added for emphasis.]

The article then goes on to discuss how—for the most part—our educational system disempowers students, and makes a number of suggestions of possible changes. Here is an example from the article:


 * One is repeatedly struck by the absurd spectacle of adults insisting that children need to become self-disciplined, or lamenting that "kids just don't take responsibility for their own behavior" - while spending their days ordering children around. The truth is that, if we want children to take responsibility for their own behavior, we must first give them responsibility, and plenty of it. The way a child learns how to make decisions is by making decisions, not by following directions.

The following free book was written for young teenagers. Many parents and teachers would benefit from reading it and discussing the ideas with their children and students.

Moursund, D.G. (June 2008). Becoming responsible for your education. Information Age Education. Access at http://i-a-e.org/downloads/doc_download/39-becoming-more-responsbile-for-your-education.html. Yop might also want to read about ways to empower students and their teachers.

You might also want to read about ways to empower students and their teachers.

Standardized Testing
We are living at a time during which our state and federal governments are requiring more and more high stakes testing. Alfie Kohn has been strongly against such testing for quite some time.

Kohn, Alfie (January 2001). Fighting the tests: A practical guide to rescuing our schools. Phi delta Kappan. Retrieved 9/21/08: http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/ftt.htm.

You can get the flavor of Kohn's position from the first part of the article:


 * Don’t let anyone tell you that standardized tests are not accurate measures. The truth of the matter is they offer a remarkably precise method for gauging the size of the houses near the school where the test was administered.   Every empirical investigation of this question has found that socioeconomic status (SES) in all its particulars accounts for an overwhelming proportion of the variance in test scores when different schools, towns, or states are compared.(1)




 * But here’s the problem: even results corrected for SES are not very useful because the tests themselves are inherently flawed.(2)   This assessment is borne out by research finding a statistical association between high scores on standardized tests and relatively shallow thinking. … Many students think deeply and score well on tests, while many others do neither.  But, as a rule, better standardized exam results are more likely to go hand-in-hand with a shallow approach to learning than with deep understanding. f Basic Skills (CTBS) and the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT).(3)

Readers may well notice that the increasing emphasis on high stakes testing disempowers both students and their teachers. Thus, Kohn recommends:


 * … if you are a teacher, you should do what is necessary to prepare students for the tests—and then get back to the real learning. Never forget the difference between these two objectives.  Be clear about it in your own mind, and whenever possible, help others to understand the distinction.

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education
Kohn, Alfie (2/16/2011). STEM Sell: Are Math and Science Really More Important Than Other Subjects? The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2/19/2011 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alfie-kohn/the-stem-sell-are-math-an_b_823589.html. Quoting from the article:


 * What's the single most alarming educational crisis today? That's easy.  It's our failure to pay more attention to the academic field of whichever educator happens to be speaking at the moment.
 * Just listen, then, and learn that while there may be other problems, too, the truly urgent issue these days is that we're just not investing in math and science instruction the way we should be -- with predictably dismaying results. No, it's that kids are outrageously ignorant about history, a subject that ought to be, but never is, a priority. No, it's that even in high school students still can't write a coherent paragraph. No, the real emergency is that reading skills are far from what they should be. No, it's that music and the arts are shamefully neglected in our schools. And so on.


 * Now there may be some truth to all of these assertions and the overarching tragedy is our failure to commit to -- and adequately fund -- education itself. How unsettling, then, to be overwhelmed by a cacophony of claims by educators from different departments forced to compete for attention.