Book Review: Alfie Kohn's "What Does it Mean to Be Well Educated? and More Essays on Standards, Grading, and Other Follies"

What does it mean to be well educated? This is just one of the questions raised by Alfie Kohn in his collection of essays published under the title What Does it Mean to Be Well Educated? And More Essays on Standards, Grading, and Other Follies. I must admit that I picked up the book originally because of the last word, follies. Giving grades in school, a folly?

In the introduction, Kohn laments the fact that a "conservative economist" had recently labeled him "dead set against any fundamental changes in the nation's schools" (Kohn viiii) in an essay. Kohn continues by explaining that he, far from being set against fundamental changes, believes that the nation's public schools must change from the roots up. He desires to bring educators to the point of questioning, not simply the methods by which they teach, but what those methods say about the ultimate goal they are trying to reach in their teaching. Are they trying to get children to memorize a "bunch o' facts", as he puts it, priming them for entry into the vast corporate machine as mostly subordinate, un-opinionated drones, or are they trying to allow children to explore ideas, learn to love learning, ask challenging, difficult questions, and become deep-thinking capable, kind, caring adults? The economist, Kohn alleges, labeled him as against changes because he is against privatization of schools, not change in itself.

Private schooling, alleges Kohn, does no good. In the first place, it allows schools to be selective, in that they need only admit students that fit their model. Most of these students tend to be children of parents who are well-educated themselves, who can take the time and money to invest heavily in their children's schooling. Secondly, seeing as how private schools can expel students who aren't meeting their standards, it allows educators to nicely do away with "trouble students", those who act out, fail tests, or skip class, without having to face the conflicts or challenges of working with the student through the problems. Private schools also profit whatever business happens to own them. The children are subjected to whatever advertising, projects, or curriculum the business happens to desire to promote, which usually is whatever will make it the best profit, not necessarily whatever is best for the children. In the same way, Kohn objects to any advertising in public schools, whether from television, videos, text books, or in the cafeteria.

Thinking back over my own private K-12 education, I cannot spot any insidious advertising having been planted in my mind. We never watched the dreaded, commercial laden Channel One (indeed, I never knew what it was until I began reading education materials). Nor did we have any vending machines on campus. I have no idea where the Friday pizza lunch was purchased. My high school, in particular, had very little money with which to work with. Our text books seemed to be deficient only in that many were well over ten years old. If we did watch an instructional video, it was in a science class, and while I'm sure the company that produced the videos placed their logo on the opening screen, I cannot recall a single one. (Most of the videos, like the text books, were old as well). My school was selective, in that it was a private Christian school. I did have to go through an interview to be accepted, although the issue was not grades or school work, but spirituality, and my parents were as much the focus of the interview as I was. I take it that Kohn would have grave objections to schools based on religion, as evidenced by the general sense that I received from reading his later essays that adults are not to attempt to transfer any ideas of theirs at all to children, but rather let the children form their ideas entirely by themselves.

This is not to say that I entirely disagree with the author. I have no qualms with private schools, especially those that are religious. Just as parents can choose to home school their children, I believe that parents should be able to send their children to a school that aligns with their religious beliefs. I do, however, object to advertising in schools. I object to children being confronted with and served foods that are decidedly unhealthy simply because the manufacturers pay big to have kids indoctrinated at a young age. This alone should be a warning-that these companies are willing to shell out money to implant their brand names on children seems to be a reason in and of itself to take a long, wary look at them before letting their products come in contact with children at all. I also object to the fact that many children cannot attend private school because they cannot reach one, because it is too expensive, or because the admissions criteria are primarily focused on academic achievement as represented by grades.

I suspect, however, that the advertising and selectivity issues are secondary to Kohn, who seems to focus in many of his essays on how, what, and why children learn, and just how much of an impact (none, apparently) the adults around them are supposed to have. One of the essays in the book that stood out to me was Kohn's call to stop saying "good job" to children. He argues that saying "good job" is a type of mind control, reducing children to nothing more than pets who complete adults' wishes to receive the reward, instead of completing tasks for the task's sake or the child's sake in and of itself. Children desire adult approval, he writes, and using "good job" after they have done something that makes our lives easier, such as not make a mess during a meal, or tied their own shoes, manipulates their desire for approval for our own convenient ends. The practice moves children to seek an adult's value judgment on what they have accomplished instead of simply taking pleasure in what they have done and being proud of it, regardless of whether or not an adult approves of it. In a study that is cited repeatedly throughout his essays, people have been shown to become less interested in doing tasks that they are rewarded for doing. "Good job", he contends, is conditional; we give approval only when what a child has done meets our standards. In truth, Kohn writes, children need unconditional love, support, encouragement, and approval. Many adults also use "good job" to encourage the behavior they would like a child to continue in, and thus discourage misbehavior. Instead of this, Kohn believes that adults should work with the child, exploring how their actions affect others to come to a conclusion together about how the child should act, and that this will allow the child to choose to behave herself, instead of simply to gain an adult's approval.

In a different essay, Kohn writes of the control that teachers seem to need to have over their classes. He contends that the question most educators are asking in class is "How can I control these kids?" instead of "What do these kids need (and how can I give it to them)?" He advises an approach that allows children to decide how the lessons will go, what they will learn, and when. Many approaches are congratulated for taking the first steps, but warned that they are still not quite there. For instance, a class meeting or council is a wonderful idea, but if the teacher decides how long the meeting will be, when or where it will be, if the children will take turns when speaking, or what the general topic will be, then the teacher is controlling the children and not allowing them to educate themselves. Also, many teachers pride themselves on having taught children to think for themselves, to work and act from intrinsic motivation, but Kohn cautions that many of those children have simply internalized the adult's expectations, instead of formulating their own theories of how they should behave.

I have here a strong inclination to believe that I might be misunderstanding some of what Kohn is urging, because it seems to me that he is calling for chaos. While I agree that extrinsic motivation is used far too much by both parents and teachers to get children to behave, I don't agree that children will behave completely intrinsically, with no adult help. If people were perfect, then children from infancy onward would of course completely intrinsically be moved to always be kind, considerate of others, etc. Such children would of course need no guidance from adults. But then, neither would adults seek to give any guidance. As a matter of fact, the whole issue would be moot; if everyone were intrinsically well-behaved then the very concept of "misbehavior" would simply not exist, and this debate would be unfathomable. The fact is that children, from infancy, are generally selfish. Watch any toddlers; they do not hesitate to take a toy or snack from another child who is smaller, slower, or weaker than they are. With no outside intervention, this child would have no reason to think it wrong to continue acting in the same way his whole life. Kohn might be contending that the child does in fact need outside intervention, but from other children, not from adults.

For instance, he maintains that you should discuss with a child how their actions affect others to help them come to a conclusion about how they should behave. If Tommy punches Suzie and takes her cookie, and Suzie cries, then presumably talking with Tommy would be enough for him to judge that the pleasure from eating a cookie was not worth the pain he caused Suzie, by Kohn's model. And if Tommy disagrees, and decides that it is much better to have the cookie? Well... this is where there is no answer that I could find in Kohn's writing. Given that we (adults) are forbidden from making a value judgment (which would be imposing our own views on children instead of allowing them to think for themselves) we could not possibly tell Tommy that what he had done was wrong. Nor could we punish him in any way. Nor could we separate Tommy from Suzie. Nor could be give him any disapproving glance or expression.

This paralysis seems to stem from Kohn's desire to always question motives. In telling Tommy that he was wrong, adults would be implicitly stating that there is a "right" and "wrong" that holds true and that Tommy must conform to. Kohn argues that Tommy should be able to judge for himself what right and wrong are, and should always be unconditionally loved, supported, and encouraged. Many adults disagree on the finer points of what is right and wrong, but most would agree that what Tommy had chosen to do falls under the category of wrong. Those who disagree, who believe that he was perfectly within his rights to injure Suzie and steal her cookie, simply because he wanted to and was strong enough to, are the type of people that most of the world tries to stay away from. Or, if they move from simply thinking that way to actually acting that way, they are usually locked up. Of course, the fact that these people are a minority does not make them worth less than others in any way whatsoever. Here is where I believe I differ from Kohn: while he seems to mandate that imposing any value judgment on a child is some kind of offensive intrusion into that child's sovereign self, I believe that teaching a child values does not violate the child, but instead helps them. It works both ways, of course; if the majority of people in the world acted or believed as Tommy did, then it would be the child/people who were kind to others that would be the minority.

Let us consider this for a moment. As it stands, we have a world in which most adults would label what Tommy has done as wrong. However, what Tommy has done is the most common action that children take, not the least common, by which I mean that most children take what they want at other's expense. Thus, most adults were in some way influenced during their childhood or adolescence and chose to put down the impulse to take whatever they wanted by harming those weaker than them, and in fact come to see that action as something not only that they themselves should not do, but that no person should do. Unless every generation of people is completely uninfluenced by the adults before them, and suddenly comes to a point where the majority of the people decide that the way they have lived up until that point was, in fact, wrong, and decide to change all together, leaving only a few stragglers who still believe it is okay to take whatever they want from others by force, then the prevailing view of adults can only be explained as having been taught to them by the adults of their time. And so on and so forth, back through history, to the beginning of humanity, at which point we must ask why the very first generation would have decided to switch from their childhood ways with no outside stimuli.

The quandary is that we as adults as a whole very clearly do want children to behave in a certain way, especially when it comes to the safety of others. Unless this value is inherent to our species, then we must teach our children to uphold it, unless we want it abandoned. And since we see that most children do not intrinsically think of others first, then we must teach them somehow. Kohn, however, wants children to come to their own conclusions. Even so, his methods to get them to do so are just as controlling as those that he disapproves of, if more subtle. For instance, the very fact that he suggests that a misbehaving child should be pulled aside and worked with to come to a conclusion is laden with paradoxes. First is the fact that he is acknowledging misbehavior at all. If he truly wants children to think for themselves, then what room is there for saying that child could ever misbehave? Second, a conversation guided by an adult to bring the child to realize that they have an effect on others and should choose their actions mindful of that fact is still value laden, in that the adults are saying that some effects are better than others, and controlling, in that adults initiated and guided the conversation to the ends that they desired.

And now this essay has run away from me. Let me be clear that, while I do have issues with Kohn's theories on value judgment, intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, and control of children, there are a great many other of his theories and ideas that I agree with. A brief overview would include his stand on standardized tests, grades, achievement, and the like. Kohn attests that such things should be done away with, because they rank children, cause them to compete, and create a school atmosphere in which the idea isn't the exploration of ideas, but rather the memorization of thousands of facts so that they can pass the test (set by politicians and economists, not educators, local neighborhoods, parents, or the like). I agree that we should be asking what we want our children to learn, not how they measure up against their peers. We should not be holding children to grades based on age instead of interest or ability, nor should we overly laud "success". And this is the point at which I agree with Kohn's aversion to saying "good job".

When a child draws a picture, of a mountain, for instance, that looks more like random pink scribbles than anything geographic, they should not be judged because their picture does not look like a mountain. Kohn contends that we say "good job" only to those children who can draw a rough triangle and call it a mountain, thus stamping out their creativity and exploration because they become addicted to adult approval and learn that adults tend to value more realism than imagination, and that this is a tragedy. I agree. It not only binds children to be less creative, but it subtly discourages those who are creative, every time their neighbor hears "good job" while their creation receives only an awkward pause and an "oh... that's... interesting, isn't it?" Children should certainly be loved and encouraged and supported unconditionally; I simply do not equate unconditional love with never giving them any guidance or value judgments. When it comes to how children treat other living creatures, I believe it is love that tells Tommy that it is not right to injure Suzie, teaching him to care for others and become a loving person himself. It will not injure Tommy to tell him that he is not right 100% of the time, or that he cannot always take what he wants from others. I think it would injure him far more to allow him to make his own decisions and continue in them than to correct him. It is when Tommy is corrected in every area, from drawing to food choice to what color he wants his hair to be that he could be injured, and in those cases I agree with Kohn that adults should not blanket their own ideas onto children.

In conclusion, I was certainly engaged while reading Kohn's essays. I plan to read more of his work; perhaps he delves deeper into his theories in other formats. Not only would I like to read more about the issues of rewards and value implantation that I have disagreed with, but I would also like to read more about those of standardized testing, achievement, grades, and fact memorization versus idea exploration that Kohn has raised in these essays. It was an enjoyable read that I would recommend to anyone with any interest in education.