Feel-Bad Education: And Other Contrarian Essays on Children and Schooling

Arguing that our schools are currently in the grip of a “cult of rigor”—a confusion of harder with better that threatens to banish both joy and meaningful intellectual inquiry from our classrooms—Alfie Kohn issues a stirring call to rethink our priorities and reconsider our practices.

Kohn’s latest wide-ranging collection of writings will add to his reputation as one of the most incisive thinkers in the field, who questions the assumptions too often taken for granted in discussions about education and human behavior.

In nineteen recently published essays—and in a substantive introduction, new for this volume—Kohn repeatedly invites us to think more deeply about the conventional wisdom. Is self-discipline always desirable? he asks, citing surprising evidence to the contrary. Does academic cheating necessarily indicate a moral failing? Might inspirational posters commonly found on school walls (“Reach for the stars!”) reflect disturbing assumptions about children? Could the use of rubrics for evaluating student learning prove counterproductive?

Subjecting young children to homework, grades, or standardized tests—merely because these things will be required of them later—reminds Kohn of Monty Python’s “getting hit on the head lessons.” And, with tongue firmly in cheek, he declares that we should immediately begin teaching twenty-second-century skills.

Whether Kohn is clearing up misconceptions about progressive education or explaining why incentives for healthier living are bound to backfire, debunking the idea that education reform should be driven by concerns about economic competitiveness or putting “Supernanny” in her place, his readers will understand why the Washington Post has said that “teachers and parents who encounter Kohn and his thoughts come away transfixed, ready to change their schools.”

Almost no writer on schools asks us to question our fundamental assumptions about education and motivation as boldly as Alfie Kohn. The Washington Post says that “teachers and parents who encounter Kohn and his thoughts come away transfixed, ready to change their schools.” And Time magazine has called him “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores.”

Here is challenging and entertaining writing on where we should go in American education, in Alfie Kohn’s unmistakable voice. He argues in the title essay with those who think that high standards mean joylessness in the classroom. He reflects thoughtfully on the question “Why Self-Discipline Is Overrated.”  And in an essay for the New York Times, which generated enormous response, he warns against the dangers of both punishing and praising children for what they do instead of parenting “unconditionally.”   

Whether he’s talking about school policy or the psychology of motivation, Kohn gives us wonderfully provocative—and utterly serious—food for thought.  This new book will be greeted with enthusiasm by his many readers, and by teachers and parents seeking a refreshing perspective on today’s debates about kids and schools.

And Other Contrarian Essays on Children and Schooling

Alfie Kohn   

Introduction:  Well, Duh! Truths So Obvious That We May Not See Them

Progressivism and beyond

Progressive Education

 The Trouble with Pure Freedom

Challenging Students – and How to Have More of Them

Getting Hit on the Head Lessons

The nuts and bolts of learning

It’s Not What We Teach; It’s What They Learn

Who’s Cheating Whom?

How to Create Nonreaders

The Trouble with Rubrics

Climate & connections: How does school feel to the students?

The Value of Negative Learning

Unconditional Teaching

Safety from the Inside Out

Bad Signs

The big picture:  education policy

Feel-Bad Education

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n Standards, Grading, and Other Folliesrizon FiOS and received a new rouAgainst ‘Competitiveness’

When 21st-Century Schooling Just Isn’t Good Enough

Debunking the Case for National Standards

Beyond the schools:  psychological issues & parenting

Atrocious Advice from Supernanny

Parental Love with Strings Attached

Why Self-Discipline Is Overrated

Cash Incentives Won’t Make Us Healthier