My two beefs with Alfie Kohn

I spent quality time with Alfie this morning, sitting in the bath tub with The Schools Our Children Deserve--it's a fine book, well worth reading. In August, I can dream about idyllic classrooms with children clamoring to learn.

He's been discussed in Time magazine, sat with "Oprah" twice, and he wanders around lecturing a lot. He's been published by The Atlantic and The New York Times. He's his own cottage industry. Nice gig if you can get it.

I will use some of his ideas in class, and toss more around with our faculty.

The two beefs?

First:

The man has not taught in a classroom since 1985. He confesses that "it wasn’t until years later that I began to realize just how little I understood about teaching." Why is it that only people removed from their own classrooms can see the evils of our ways?

OK, that was a cheap shot--he's spent his life observing others, teachers who have been far more successful than he, and he acknowledges as much with charming self-effacement. But it's not nearly as cheap a shot at what's about to follow....

Second:

The man looks like the poster boy for the "San Francisco Flower Child Rescue League." He's preaching solid reform, he's got hard-hitting wonderful ideas, and he looks all of 19 years old. ("Alfie" doesn't help....makes "Arne" sound like a stud.)

We need a face with battle scars, maybe a biker beard. We need tough!

We're getting our butts kicked by Arne Duncan, of all people. So, Alfie, here's my gift to your our cause:

The original image is from Pay Fairly, which got it from Wikipedia,
which says it's a self-portrait used with permission. I hope Mr. Kohn has a good sense of humor.

(And, Mr. Kohn, if you should ever wander to this very tiny piece of this electron universe, and find this piece offensive, I'll remove it.)

Alfie, Arne, Charlie, and Mumford

It's July--the sun still reigns, but as it slips slowly away, sordid disorder slips in. Gardens get weedy, wasps a tad touchy. June fools us into thinking entropy is an illusion.

July cures illusions.

***

I am reading both Alfie Kohn and Lewis Mumford this week--Kohn's The School Our Children Deserve and Mumford's The Myth of the Machine. Kohn paints a lovely picture of what is possible, Mumford explains why we do it wrong anyway:

Once automatic control is installed one cannot refuse to accept its instructions...for theoretically the machine cannot allow anyone to deviate from its own perfect standards. And this brings us at once to the most radical defect in every automated system: for its smooth operation this under-dimensioned system requires equally under-dimensioned men, whose values are needed for the operation and continued expansion of the system itself.

Human autonomy has become a quaint idea.

***

Arne Duncan, the quintessential Organizational Man, was predicted by Lewis Mumford--he does what he does to keep the machinery humming.

The sad thing is that a lot of folks, culturally accepted sociopaths, do as Arne does. Joyce Irvine, an effective principal by all accounts, was fired this week to keep the machine humming.

“Her students made so much progress.
What’s happened to her is not at all connected to reality.”

Jeanne Collins, Superintendent of district

***

The good news is this--if you treat children as "humans now" instead of as "workers later" they do as well on the standardized tests as those who get the drill-to-kill treatment, perhaps even better.

I'm busy constructing a constructivist classroom. I'm risking my career on Kohn's words and research. I'm hoping my children become happy, thinking adults.

And I pray I never have an Arne Duncan clone give me credit years later as the driving force in his education.