September 6, 2016 Do Our Expectations of Kids Aim Too High or Too Low? By Alfie Kohn “Old-school” parenting and teaching are often distinguished by a failure to understand what children are capable of doing or understanding, or to provide the support they need and the respect they deserve. But does that mean kids are being underestimated — or overestimated? ... Read More
Blog Posts
September 27, 2016 The Bonus Effect One Kind of Interest that Rewards Don’t Kill By Alfie Kohn For nearly half a century, research has raised troubling questions about the practice of dangling rewards in front of people to get them to do what we want. It doesn’t matter whether the people in question are male or female, children or adults. ... Read More
December 1, 2016 Narcissist-in-Chief A Psychological Take on a Political Reality By Alfie Kohn Reporter: What do you think people will take away from the [Republican National] Convention? What are you hoping? Donald Trump: From the convention? The fact that I’m very well liked. – New York Times, July 21, 2016 The initial shock has given way to a twofold ... Read More
December 12, 2016 The Case for Abolishing Class Rank By Alfie Kohn When students are rated with letter or number grades, research shows they’re apt to think in a shallower fashion – and to lose interest in what they’re learning – as compared with students who aren’t graded at all. Alternative methods for reporting student progress are not only less ... Read More
February 7, 2017 “Free-Range Kids”? It Depends… By Alfie Kohn Not long ago, the New York Times Magazine published an article about a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who turned his backyard into an elaborate play space for neighborhood kids so they could “take risks and play rough and tumble” without adult supervision. No doubt many readers smiled and nodded to hear ... Read More
March 23, 2017 Is Trump a Conservative Only by Accident? By Alfie Kohn Perhaps you’ve heard it said that Donald Trump is all about ego, not ideology. The reason many conservatives were so slow to warm up to him, on this view, is that they realized he’s not really one of them. He is driven not by any political ... Read More
April 18, 2017 What Student Test-Takers Share with Ejected Airline Passengers By Alfie Kohn Social media exploded in early April after a video was posted of a doctor being dragged off a United flight for which he had a ticket. The outrage continued to build for days not just because we could watch what this man experienced but because the ... Read More
June 24, 2017 Don’t Lecture Me! By Alfie Kohn [Lecturing is the] best way to get information from teacher’s notebook to student’s notebook without touching the student’s mind. — George Leonard Of Gary Larsen’s delightfully deranged “Far Side” cartoons from the 1980s and ’90s, my favorite features a bunch of cows contentedly grazing in a meadow. Suddenly one cow ... Read More
September 25, 2017 Transformation by Degrees By Alfie Kohn Three concepts emerged independently in different fields: quantum leaps (in particle physics), punctuated equilibrium (in evolutionary biology), and paradigm shifts (in the history of science). All of these converge on the revelation that change doesn’t always take place incrementally. Sometimes things stay pretty much the same for a long time, and ... Read More
December 18, 2017 Do We Perform Better Under Pressure? Unexpected Complications and Hidden Value Judgments Lurk Behind a Common Question By Alfie Kohn Someone recently wrote to ask me whether it was true that pressure makes people more productive. Might stress actually be good for us? Notwithstanding the cliche about how diamonds are made, such a sweeping generalization is hard ... Read More