Introduction

** Alfie Kohn ** ** //speaking and writing about human behavior,// **** //education, and parenting// **

Alfie Kohn, a former teacher and in-demand expert on education and human behavior, is considered a very controversial figure in educational philosophy, for his views on homework and classroom discipline. He holds degrees from Brown University and the University of Chicago. Kohn has published 12 books, and many, many scholarly articles.

Kohn has described himself as a progressive educator, as well as a supporter of a constructivist learning model, where students interact with their lessons to further their understanding, instead of passively receiving the material, or learning by rote—and where students have an active voice in how their classroom is run. His work has been heavily influenced by Piaget and Dewey. This philosophy has helped to shape his views on homework and classroom discipline—he believes that learning is best accomplished by doing, and that applies to both curricular settings, and classroom management. Kohn sees ideal classrooms as learning communities, where students respect and understand each other—and not simply because they’re being told to behave. To that end, Kohn suggests solutions that foster a community of respect, so that discipline will be unnecessary—activities like class projects, and classroom meetings. (Charles, p. 77) Kohn believes that students who are being told to behave will only do so because it is a rule, and will never understand how to treat others. (Wolfgang, p. 108) Students need to be shown respect by teachers for its own sake, and they will mirror it back. Or, as Kohn said, “After all, if a good society was defined where citizens obey every governmental decree, then scholars might be able to adduce scientific evidence that a good leader is one who resembles Orwell’s Big Brother.” (Wolfgang, p. 344) This encapsulates Kohn’s views on major discipline methods—that these methods treat the classroom like a totalitarian state, whereas Kohn believes it should operate more like a republic, where the students have voices and votes—hence the classroom meetings and feedback on classroom activities.

Kohn is an outspoken critic of many popular educational models—and takes issue with many of the methods we have studied in class, such as Canter’s Assertive Discipline, behavioral analysis, cooperative discipline, and Jones’ Tools for Teaching. Many of Kohn’s criticisms all stem from his basic beliefs that compliance (in all forms) as a goal does students no good. Kohn posits that behavioral compliance methods ignore the reasons that the student may have been misbehaving in the first place, and also ignore the individuality that each student brings to a classroom. He believes the same about rewards—they mask the reasons behind the behavior issues, which may be serious issues in a student’s life that educators need to confront. As Kohn said in "Almost There, But Not Quite," one of the readings presented in this wiki, he believes that effective teachers need not to encourage compliance, but to ask “What do these kids need, and how can we meet those needs?” (Kohn, //Educational Leadership//, March 2003, paragraph 4) He argues that behavior management is a tool being used to act //on// students instead of //with// students (Educational Leadership, paragraph 6), and that classrooms should be more democratic.

Today, Kohn is a much-sought-after expert—giving lectures, appearing on national television, and above all else, Kohn is using new media to reach parents, educators, and others. Kohn is an active user of Twitter- a popular micro-blogging site that allows users to communicate with followers in 140 characters or less. His Twitter account @alfiekohn, has more than 8,800 followers, and he tweets regularly about education, childhood development, and current events. He also alerts his Twitter followers about new articles, posts on influential websites like the Huffington Post, and media appearances. In order to recognize Kohn's prevalent thoughts, we've included his most current and relevant tweets throughout this wik i.

Kohn lives with his family outside of Boston.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Alfie_Kohn