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Tag Archive for 'Alfie Kohn'
Yesterday, Alfie Kohn; today Tony Wagner.
Jay Greene goes after the education guru on his blog and in an op-ed in the Northwest Arkansas Morning News. The Fayetteville Public School system has purchased 2,000 copies of Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap and is holding a series of public meetings, according to Greene, on how Wagner’s vision for 21st century skills ”might guide our schools.” Be afraid, says Jay. Be very afraid.
It’s hard to get people to think critically about people who push a focus on critical thinking. To be for critical thinking is like being for goodness and light. The tricky part is in how you get there. To the extent that Wagner has any concrete suggestions, he seems to be taking folks down the wrong path. He wants less emphasis on content and less testing. But he shows no evidence that higher levels of critical thinking can be found in places or at times when there was less content and less testing. In fact, the little evidence he does provide would suggest the opposite.
Joanne Jacobs weighs in as well, pointing to a Sandra Stotsky op-ed on Tony Wagner, and noting succinctly: “I don’t see excess knowledge as a big problem for today’s students.”
Cultural Literacy Bonus: Check out the illustration atop Jay’s blog post. It’s Bugs Bunny dressed as a Wagnerian Valkyrie from the cartoon, What’s Opera, Doc? Can you imagine a kid’s cartoon using Wagner’s Ring Cycle as the basis of a parody today? It’s a bromide to suggest that entertainment has been dumbed-down over time, but it’s hard not to notice the difference in the vocabulary of Mary Poppins, for example, or the Rex Harrison version of Doctor Doolittle compared to contemporary kids’ fare. Quantifying the change in cultural references and vocabulary level in children’s entertainment over the last 50 years or so would make for an interesting study, if it hasn’t already been done.
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.
“Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
–George Orwell, Animal Farm
I think of Animal Farm when I hear the terms “conservative,” “progressive,” “reformer,” and “establishment” tossed back and forth between one group and another. Lo and behold, they mean everything and nothing. Between David Brooks’ recent column in the New York Times and Alfie Kohn’s commentary in The Nation, we’ve got quite a bit of muck to filter. Brooks crudely contrasts “reformers” with “establishment”; Kohn, supposedly questioning such categories, uses false categories of his own. He argues that the “reformers” are allied with “conservatives,” then, instead of defining either term, proceeds to defend his argument in language that is equally imprecise.
Each of Kohn’s statements is internally confused and based on muddy language and reasoning. I’ll take his statements one by one.
1. There is no evidence that alternative forms of assessment are more “authentic.” To the contrary, they can be every bit as contrived as standardized tests, if not more so. While I recognize the need for a combination of assessments, I dispute the assertion that one is more “authentic” than another.
2. “Top-down” mandates are not inherently bad. It all depends on what is being mandated. A mandated curriculum such as Core Knowledge, which specifies what should be taught but not how, can help ensure a solid education for students without limiting the teachers’ craft or the students’ creativity. By contrast, a mandated pedagogical model like Balanced Literacy can cramp both the process and the content. Yet any policy needs to be implemented thoughtfully in order to work. It should allow for the intelligence of teachers and students.
3. What is “rote” learning? I learn a poem’s meaning as I memorize it; I start to understand its structure, meaning, rhythm, and tones. My mind plays with it. It comes to me in different parts, from different angles. Memorization (of poems, language, and math facts) allows for deep learning. Yet I rarely see schools requiring students to memorize anything (except perhaps their “learning goals”). This is a shame.
4. About the “behaviorist” model: much of education is based on behaviorist assumptions. Kohn needs to distinguish between behaviorism (which has some degree of truth) and a “model” that places it at the center. Also, the use of cash rewards has problems beyond “behaviorism” itself; it sends children the message that they need not do anything for which they are not paid.
5. “a corporate sensibility and an economic rationale for schooling”–too vague and lumpy. I recommend that he separate “corporate sensibility” from “economic rationale.” They are not one and the same. And there is a world of difference between employing some degree of “economic rationale” and adopting a “business model.”
6. Charter schools–again, there’s a world of difference between having a few charter schools (or alternative public schools) and moving toward a charter school “model.” He should acknowledge the difference. Also, he needs to explain the difference between nonprofit and for-profit charters. The question of profit in education is troubling and complex and goes far beyond charters themselves (to test-making, textbooks, pedagogical programs, etc.).
With muddy language in each of his points, it’s no wonder that he makes the equally muddy association between these principles and conservatism. But what is conservatism? There are different strands. As Diane Ravitch points out on Politico,
“There is an enduring message of conservatism that makes sense for our times: fiscal conservatism, respect for the Constitution, preservation of our values and our culture, protection of individual rights and freedoms, concern for national security. This version of conservatism has enduring appeal for a large swath of the population It is not the same as the cramped, narrow, biased expression of contempt for people who are different (e.g., homosexuals); it is not the same as me-first economic policies; nor is it the same as being hard-hearted towards those with less.”
Such conservatism has much in common with certain kinds of progressivism. Instead of using jargon and false logic to pit “conservatives” against “progressives” (or “reformers” against “establishment”), we could use careful language and logic to find common ground and draw up a good policy or two.
Diana Senechal teaches theatre and ESL at P.S. 108, an official Core Knowledge school in New York City. She has a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale. Her translations of the Lithuanian poetry of Tomas Venclova appeared this fall in a new volume, The Junction.
“Beware school reformers,” Alfie Kohn warns darkly in The Nation. In the world according to Mr. Kohn there are “educational progressives,” and then there are reformers who are ”disconcertingly allied with conservatives.” To be a school reformer, Kohn writes with no apparent fear of contradiction, is to support:
- a heavy reliance on fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests to evaluate students and schools, generally in place of more authentic forms of assessment;
- the imposition of prescriptive, top-down teaching standards and curriculum mandates;
- a disproportionate emphasis on rote learning–memorizing facts and practicing skills–particularly for poor kids;
- a behaviorist model of motivation in which rewards (notably money) and punishments are used on teachers and students to compel compliance or raise test scores;
- a corporate sensibility and an economic rationale for schooling, the point being to prepare children to “compete” as future employees; and
- charter schools, many run by for-profit companies.
“Notice that these features are already pervasive, writes Kohn, which means “reform” actually signals more of the same.”
(Deep, cleansing breath) It’s hard to know how to begin unwinding all that is argumentative, tendentious and just plain wrong about this uniquely unhelpful little screed, insisting as Kohn does, that there is a political litmus test for favoring certain ideas in education. E.D. Hirsch could write a book about the inability of educators to differentiate progressive ends from progressive means (Wait. He’s already written at least three such books) and Kohn falls right into the same old pattern.
All but the most diehard accountability hawks seem to have accepted the idea that there’s more to student achievement than can be demonstrated by merely bubbling in a reading test once a year. By my count, about 4% of the nation’s 100,000 public schools are charters. That’s Kohn’s defintion of “pervasive?” And prescriptive, top-down teaching standards? Where, pray tell? Mostly we have a collection of empty “performance” (not content) standards that are so loose and impressionistic that virtually any lesson on any subject can be said to meet some standard.
And then there’s that most dogeared of pages in the familiar Alfie Kohn hymnal: ”disproportionate emphasis on rote learning–memorizing facts and practicing skills.” It’s charge he habitually and dishonestly throws at Core Knowledge schools. In what dark satanic mill is all this rote memorization happening? Show me. Given how “pervasive” it is, it shouldn’t be hard.
Matthew Ygelsias also goes after Mr. Kohn, calling the case for national standards pretty clear:
It’s silly for the federal government to invest a significant amount of money in something without articulating any kind of uniform national goals the money is supposed to be supporting. Beyond that, it’s incredibly harmful to children that when they move — a circumstance that disproportionately impacts poor children — there’s no curricular alignment between what they were learning previously and what they’re being taught now.
Update: The wise and wonderful Nancy Flanagan, while not commenting on Kohn’s piece, says it all over at Teacher in a Strange Land. “The worst possible way to approach any productive reform is to set up adversarial camps, and pit them against each other,” she observes. ”Win or lose. Leaving the winner with a constituency that’s half triumphant and half averse.”
Lots to cheer about if you’re a fan of lower standards and diminshed expectations.
One of Britain’s top grammar schools is slashing homework to no more than 40 minutes a night. The school’s headmaster more than that becomes “mechanical” and “repetitive.” His deputy adds that too much homework could be “depressing” and put pupils off learning. “We had boys doing three or four hours a night at the expense of sports, music practice or simply having fun,” he says.
In Toronto, the school board has passed a policy manadating a maximum of one hour of homework for 7th and 8th graders, while another in Barrie, Canada has banned it altogether. That earned an “atta boy!” from anti-homework scold Alfie Kohn. “The Toronto policy is a teeny first step,” he tells the Canadian website Parent Central. For parents who are concerned that homework keeps them in the loop about what their children are learning, Kohn sniffs, “We can solve that problem in five minutes. Teachers can send home annotated guides to the curriculum – here’s what we are teaching and why.” That will indeed take five minutes. To read.
Finally, what do you call 1+1=3? In Pittsburgh, it’s called half right. School officials in the Steel City are the latest to go for the no-grade-lower-than-50-percent strategy as a way to keep struggling students involved.
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