My Issue With Alfie Kohn

I happened to meet a friend of mine earlier today who home schools her child. We were with a third parent and my friend mentioned the ideas of education writer Alfie Kohn. My friend was surprised to hear that Kohn's writings inform a lot of the work that I do for my large urban school board.

Granted, Kohn's ideas about progressive, constructivist education focusing on the transitioning away from such standard practices as homework and rewards are controversial, but while I find some of his ideas worth pursuing, I enjoy far more that Alfie Kohn ought to let us have a meaningful discussion about education reform.

Thus, my issue with Alfie Kohn isn't actually with him or his ideas, but rather how we go about implementing new ideas like his.

Take for example his idea that competition is counter-productive to student learning. Much of his early writing is devoted to demonstrating how deeply competition is embedded in the structure of education, particularly in the awarding of grades. In Kohn's view, grades are used primarily to rank students relative to each other, based in part on the premise that particular jobs or university seats are naturally and deservedly scarce, going only to the best and the brightest (I'd like to imagine for a second a system that allowed anyone who wanted to train to be a doctor or lawyer to try and become one). His subsequent work investigates the negative effects that grades and other forms of external rewards have on student motivation. His arrival at a constructivist position is the result of shifting the focus from external to internal student motivation.

As controversial as his ideas are, I rarely find teachers willing to state that he is wrong, or that the education system ought to function differently from what he suggests. Rather, most teachers will suggest his ideas are "impractical" and that a modern education system could not possibly function effectively as he described.

I like this argument because it puts teachers in a position to accept his premises if a practical manner of implementing them could be found. However, this is precisely where the problems tend to occur.

The first problem happens to be that regardless of whether collaboration may be the natural and most desirous state of student learning as Kohn would have it, or whether things are indeed competitive, the fact of the matter is that there now exists students whom the education system has conditioned to be competitive and expect external rewards. The few instances I have experienced, or been made of aware, where teachers have tried to create a more Kohn-esque learning environment have often reported resistance from students, leading to complaints from parents. In retrospect, I think it is fair to expect students to complain if it appears that the so-called "rules of school" are being changed in mid-stream, especially if these are the students currently reaping the rewards.

This isn't to say that students can't or won't adapt. We have much evidence that suggests they can, even in non-constructivist situations. Students adapt to different or new learning expectations every time they change schools. In fact, students often appear to expect to have to change. Thus, more thought needs to be put into how and when such reforms are implemented. In my experience, these initiatives are often the result of individual teachers experimenting in their own classrooms with the support of the school admin, but ultimately fail when they cannot achieve a critical mass in their own building.

This is the crux of any educational reform? How do you achieve the critical mass necessary to insure the reform's survival and success? Is it better to implement gradual, incremental change, starting at the school's entry level grade? Does a school need to provide dual streams when embarking on a building-wide reform, meaning a traditional and non-traditional stream? Would the one undermine the other?

Thoughts on Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody, Ch.4

I think this is perhaps one of the most famous chapters from Here Comes Everybody where Shirky talks about the imminent failure of traditional print media. He claims this comes from a lack of awareness of newspaper editors of their role as mere gatekeepers and failing to realize that their value was undermined once anyone could publish to the internet.

It's the idea that prompted me to pick up his book, because I'm trying desperately to consider how teachers might be functioning in a similar manner. Certainly educators in charge of curriculum act as gatekeepers when they determine what points of knowledge are required for students to learn, and classroom teachers perform similar roles when they choose which media students will use to become aware of these points.

So, the problem becomes trying to identify what the role of the teacher ought to become, and how schools and classrooms might be organized, once students can be trusted to find their own appropriate media to reach the desired learning outcomes. In my view, it is even worth wondering to what extent students should be involved in determining what particular knowledge outcomes might relevant to the courses they study.

Arrival City, Ch.3

My favourite part in Chapter 3 occurs when Saunders describes the Arrival City neighbourhoods as being "richer than they appear" in that accounting practices can only measure the resources that exist within the neighbourhood, but fail to account for family members that have moved out though still maintain economic ties to the neighbourhood. Saunders writes:

"This paradox has created a sense among outsiders that the city's immigrant districts are poorer or more disparate than they really are, which leads to a misunderstanding of the forms of government investment they really need - a serious policy problem in many migrant-based cities around the world. Rather than getting the tools of ownership, education, security, business creation and connection to the wider economy, they are too often treated as destitute places that need non-solutions such as social workers, public-housing blocks, and urban-planned redevelopments."

In reflecting on previous chapters, I have suggested that perhaps school districts need to take flexible approaches to school development. The perception of a particular school's identity and social role cannot be seen as static. In this chapter, it would appear that Saunders might suggest that school districts should dialogue with current and former inhabitants of the neighbourhood about the kinds of programs that ought to be offered.

Arrival City: Thoughts, Pt.2

Having just read Chapter 2 of Doug Saunders' book on rural-urban migration, I am drawn to his focus that successful transitions to the urban environment is dependent on the success of relationships being created in these neighbourhoods. This intrigues me since, as an educator, I find that those of us interested in the 21st Century Classroom, tend to talk about the new emphasis of schooling as being on the development of relationships between students, especially between students of different backgrounds. Elsewhere on this blog I have suggested that the function modern K-12 institutions is to be more socialization than knowledge transfer, and it would seem that this is in keeping with the needs of these "Arrival" districts.

One of the immediate concerns that I have though is in regards to the quality of the physical school building. There is a tendency of school districts to believe in promoting universal values and attempting to insure a minimum of standards (in this case health and engineering ones) for all students. Creating a building along these lines in shantytowns is a very jarring idea, and one that would almost force the legitimization of these neighbourhoods. On the otherhand, I am not certain that the creation of a school as transient and immediate as the surroundings would necessarily be a bad thing. I'm not sure, either way.

The one problem that I keep thinking about, especially within the context of Calgary, is that immigration to "arrival" neighbourhoods, seem to promise eventual social mobility, but what about non-arrival neighbourhoods that appear to be stagnating? What is to be done here? Is the key to find ways to make them more attractive to urban newcomers? Is gentrification a different form of what Saunders is talking about, a kind of internal urban migration?

Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky, Ch. 2

I've finally gotten around to reading Clay Shirky's 2008 book Here Comes Everybody, despite having already read several of his articles (particularly on the collapse of print-based for-pay journalism) and watched a few of his talks. My takeaway from this chapter is Ronald Coase's discussion of transaction costs in the formation of management structures, dating back to 1937. Part of my hope by the end of Shirky's book is to have a better understanding of how to conceptualize the management structures inherent in the delivery of information found in our schools. While it's pretty easy to draw up District hierarchies running from the superintendent on down, I am suspicious that the route information needs to take in order for students to gain knowledge is not the same as that required to keep the lights on in the buildings.

Arrival City: Thoughts, Pt.1

In Arrival City, Doug Saunders makes the claim in chapter one that certain peripheral cities, suburbs, or neighbourhoods function as transition zones for migrants. The social and economic role of these areas is to ease newcomers into an urban environment. It goes as a given then, the living conditions in these areas will be much lower than in other parts of the urban conglomeration, but still represent a step up, either in economic or social terms, than the other areas these migrants are leaving.

The problem, from an educational social reformist perspective, is how to mitigate or "raise up" the living conditions in these transition zones. But maybe, the more effective strategy is to concentrate on what happens to these zones as they build up, gaining economic and social clout, and in essence, cease acting as transition zones, forcing the urban periphery and the development of new transitions zones, further out. Perhaps this suggests we need a different idea of what a school looks like, one that encompasses a notion of different types of schools for different neighbourhoods. A school in Doug Saunders' transition zones has different social functions to fulfill than one in a more established, stabilized neighbourhood. There is a role to be played in assisting the transformation of schools from one type to another.

One of the problems with this idea however, is that the notion of different schools for different neighbourhoods also seems to suggest different learning outcomes for different neighbourhoods. The dream of educational reformers of the 1960s valued equality of outcomes for all students, regardless of locale. I'm not sure I'm ready to accept the death of that dream.

Gender Differences in Schools

I came across a very interesting article in Educational Leadership today that suggested there was very little difference between the brains of boys and girls, implying that teaching strategies aimed specifically at each gender were misguided. What was different however, was the actual difference between behaviours of boys and girls, with a notion that these behaviours are reinforced through social interactions. At one point, the author even notes that gender-specific teaching strategies might actually do more to increase differences between boys and girls than to remediate them.

You can read the full article here.

Lately I've been puzzled over what teachers in the classroom, and schools in general, ought to do when faced with two different social groups performing at different levels in different curricular areas. Under a previous philosophy of schooling, it was believed that by the end of Grade 12, every student ought to arrive at the same endpoint. If a group of students were lagging behind in certain areas, extra instruction would be required. However, given that classroom time is a finite resources, extra instruction meant less instruction in something else. The current problem, as I see it, is if social groups perform at different levels primarily because of the social interactions they engage in, both in and out of school, then I question the school's ability to offset the social behaviours that are occurring in the two-thirds of the day that a student spends not in school. In essence, I no longer believe that if outside-of-school social behaviours are the causes of different performance or achievement levels that schools can produce a scenario in which all students perform at an equal level. It seems to me that an inequality of performance is inherent. Unfortunately, if the goal of school is no longer to insure an equality of outcomes, I'm not sure what the purpose of school ought to be.

So, if girls are better readers than boys, should we make boys read more? Should we cut back on gym and math time, since these are areas that boys could use less instruction? Should we do the opposite for girls? Less reading and more math? Would this make students more willing to go to school? More likely to be engaged in their learning? In this case, the push for student engagement seems in conflict with the desire for optimal learning in all areas of the curriculum. It all seems very messy.