Meet A Radical in Education Named Alfie Kohn

Alfie Kohn believes that homework is completely bad. He says it adds to the frustration of the students and their parents, increases stress levels, and that the research shows that there's been no correlation to any added value. http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/rethinkinghomework.htm.

Education isn't a glass for us to fill, but instead, a flower we need to culture and fertilize. Many folks assume their pupils have little to no knowledge about the subject material they drone on and on about, and therefore, this legitimates their mini-dictatorship, because the ignorant students need to just listen to the teacher, and regurgitate all that the teacher says back to them, to their own gleeful satisfaction. For them, that is true learning.

But it's not true learning. True learning is when the students are captivated, invigorated, pursuing their own interests, and of course, the sharing of power. Kohn says the same when he says that we can use homework to involve students in the sharing of power. Since there's no one size fits all solution to assigning homework, to a classroom full of folks with many different interests, we can ask the students want they want to do, or we can assign independent research projects, where they choose their own subject materials to talk about.

As a constructivist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfie_Kohn, Alfie Kohn believes that the obedient student who is excelling in her class, as stated in the question above, is only learning compliance for compliance sake. Kohn even criticizes “positive reinforcement”, which I find highly interesting, but I'm not entirely convinced of. The point he makes, however, is valuable. For Kohn, he says that when we say “good job” to our students, then our students learn to do things that we like for them to do. Instead of pursuing educational aims for their own intrinsic value, again, we are only seeking compliance.

Constructivists, such as Dewey, Vygotsky, Piaget, Bruner, Montessori, Freire, believe that each individual construct our own realities, and that our actions and behaviors can only make sense when it fits into our perspectives of reality. For Kohn, this means that students should have a part in the decision making processes in the classroom, such as curriculum, classroom organization, and even discipline measures as well. Classroom meetings, and study circles can enhance learning towards the direction Mr. Kohn is writing about. While Kohn is totally against classroom management and discipline from the top down, he stops short of saying that each and every student has a sacred sovereign autonomy that's worthy of dignity and respect, that blind obedience to arbitrary and absolute authority is destructive, and that democratic processes should be used. The reason he's against classroom management tactics is the same reason he's against homework, and against positive reinforcement: it only seeks capitulation to authority, and it ignores the inner realities of human beings.

Professor Arum says that even college students aren't learning to think for themselves, and that they also exhibit a lack of critical thinking skills. http://www.npr.org/2011/02/09/133310978/in-college-a-lack-of-rigor-leaves-students-adrift His solution would be the opposite of Mr. Kohn: more rigor is called for, and certainly, more rigor is a fad that many educators are picking up on. For Arum, the solution is to give out more homework, and so the student who is compliant with the teachers, does all they are commanded to do, scores well on standardized tests, then they are the model students we need more of, and should be emulated. Giving them praise encourages them to continue on, doing what is commanded of them, but rarely, are they asked to think for themselves. There's many ways to combat this, such as jigsaws, where each student brings in their independent research into the classroom, and they share it with others. Teaching Others has the highest retention rate on the Learning Pyramid (90%), and so jigsaws would seem to be more in alignment with Kohn. But awards assemblies, honor rolls, and bumper stickers are extrinsic rewards for the students being compliant, and therefore, their construction of their own realities aren't taken into account. At Valley High School in Louisville recently, Mr. Pauley, a 9^th grade science was caught on recording shouting at the student to just “just the fuck up!” Mr. Pauley had to call all of the parents and talk to them about why he thought it was necessary to lash out as his unruly students. For Mr. Pauley, compliance was the only value he cared about, and he therefore was sacrificing true constructivist learning with strict order, and obedience to authority.

Maybe Kohn will speak about having democratic structures in the classroom in his other writings. In my own experience, even in a Democratization class, and in the Occupy movement, we've been trained to appeal to our leaders, and aren't respecting each other's viewpoints, or even allowing space for others to even speak. Upon reading more of Mr. Kohn's work, I feel as though he'll eventually speak more about democracy, since that's the general trend of his writings. And a classroom that allows for the students to have more involvement in their own curriculum, organizing their own classrooms, with study circles, cooperative learning projects, jigsaws, and the sharing of decision-making power, seems to be the ideal “good education” viewpoint of Mr. Kohn.