Dan Willingham does a takedown of all-purpose education pundit Alfie Kohn over at Britannica Blog. Dan cheekily titles his piece “Alfie Kohn is Bad For You and Dangerous for Your Children” to lampoon Kohn’s stock-in-trade of broad-brush oversimplification. He details how Kohn ”consistently makes factual errors, oversimplifies the literature that he seeks to explain, and commits logical fallacies.”
Kohn specializes in attacking conventional wisdom in education. He takes a common practice that people think is helpful and then shows it’s not helpful, and in fact is destructive. Most people think that homework helps kids learn, praise shows appreciation and makes them more likely to do desirable things, and self-discipline helps them achieve their goals. Kohn argues that each of these conclusions is wrong or over-simplified. Homework may bring small benefits to some students, but it incurs greater costs and overall is likely not worth assigning. Praise doesn’t help academic achievement, it controls children, it reduces motivation, and makes them less able to make decisions. Self-discipline is oversold as an educational panacea, and in some contexts may actually be undesirable.
Kohn raises interesting questions and is a useful provocateur, Willingham concludes, but he “cannot be trusted as an accurate summary of the research literature….He will lead you to something interesting and useful, but if you want to use it, you will have to do the work yourself.”
Along with Stuart Buck’s recent blog piece, seconded by Jay Greene, it seems the spotlight is burning a bit more brightly on Kohn of late. He has richly earned the dressing down. I’ve gotten out of the business of responding to Kohn’s deliberate and persistent mischaracterization of the Core Knowledge curriculum as ”rote memorization” and a “bunch o’ facts.” (The offer still stands, Mr. Kohn: Let me know when you want to visit a Core Knowledge school.) Clearly, Kohn has no incentive to let a bunch o’ facts get in the way of what is a lucrative business of books, articles and lecture fees– reportedly 200 speaking engagements a year at $5K a pop. Indeed, it’s tempting to view Alfie Kohn, Inc. as the intellectual equivalent of professional wrestling. He needs a heavy to go after to keep that income stream running strong.
Update: Eduwonk questions Dan’s sanity and masochistic tendencies in taking on Alfie Kohn. Dan’s response in the comments section discusses the real price of shrugging your shoulders and rolling your eyes.
