The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards" [Paperback]

Education heads the news around the nation today. Everywhere you hear the cry for tougher standards for teachers and students, and accountability for schools and districts. Headlines scream that American children are falling behind their counterparts in other countries. The solution: an educational system that is 'back to basics' and has 'tougher standards'. Is this the answer? Alfie Kohn states a resounding 'No'.

Mr. Kohn's book takes you on a journey to explore how the American educational system is really doing. He then presents standardized tests for what they are: norm-referenced tests in which 50% of all children taking the test will fail. Kohn dissects how the tests are created and changed from year to year, indicating that if too many students get an answer correct, it is thrown out of the test. He delves into how standardized test scores are published in newspapers, and used by the government and school districts to hold schools and teachers hostage. He shows how the use of such scores are creating an educational community that teaches to the test, is devoid of meaningful learning, and does not address the needs of the individual child.

The Schools Our Children Deserve is written for parents and educators alike. It aims to educate its readers, so that they can become informed participants in the design of the schools our children deserve.

W.Joy Lopez
Pepperdine University Doctoral Student

One of the myths perpetuated by politicians and businesspeople, is that raising school standards and high-stakes testing will improve learning. Kohn examines the historical context of the myth within the system. He offers readers data and research that contradict the myth. He has organized the book to examine the destructive nature of implementing standards based education and high testing through a variety of lens: social, emotional, and economic.

With an emphasis on grades and competitive test scores that rank students, teachers, and schools, Kohn argues that education has shifted away from student-centered learning. Schools forced to implement standardize curriculum to support high stakes testing have objectified students and teachers. The consequences of these policies results in a curriculum that lacks authentic context and educational goals that are based on grades and test results.

The impact on teachers forced to implement rigid curriculum that changes the role of classroom teachers to classroom technicians whose only responsibility is to transmit facts and data through transmission teaching. The impact on children is a misguided educational experience that may have long term emotional and psychological reprucussions. With an emphasis on scores, rigid and mediocre curriculum is designed to improve tests scores but fail to offer students an authentic and engaging learning experience. The reader is reminded that the cost of focusing on "how well" students are doing verses "what" they're doing results in a disintegration of student's interest and motivation. With an emphasis on student grades and school scores, the purpose of education is no longer about providing an authentic learning experience for child, it is about test scores and ranking.

Because of the impact that high stake testing has on schools and children, Kohn takes time to examine the variations in testing formats, inequalities, and failures. Since high-stakes tests are norm-reference, he provides readers with an understanding of how these test are used and the consequences awaiting 50% of the testing population that are predestined to fail.

Kohn offers compelling arguments to rethink these practices and the purpose of education. If we want to focus on test scores that rank students, standardized curriculums and high-stakes testing will fill the bill. However, if our goal is to create meaningful, authentic learning experiences for our children, these policies must be challenged and abandoned.

This book not only informs the reader, but it places a moral responsibility on each of us to become more informed and involved with the purpose of learning in our schools. Kohn's agenda is simple. He is not a politician looking for votes. He is an advocate for children. Kohn is promoting authentic learning opportunities that respect the natural curiosity and motivation of children.

After reading this book, Kohn places a moral responsibility on all of us to become informed, involved, and pro-active in the development of schools that our children deserve.

Kohn makes the mistake of equating preference for traditional pedagogical methods with social conservatism, an equation that he uses in the service of an ad hominem argument. It's time for less-than-conservative parents to start speaking out about their confidence in traditional teaching methods. Kohn is just plain wrong about the inextricability of sociopolitical and educational views, though extremists on the traditional side also tend to equate their educational traditionalism with traditional social values. The two have historically been intertwined, but are not intrinsically so.

A perplexing flaw lies in Kohn's seemingly viewing direct instruction and student understanding as mutually exclusive. This is an absurd assumption (Isn't his book an attempt at direct instruction?) when the direct instruction is in capable hands and when the learner is capable of abstraction. In rejecting direct instruction, Kohn undercredits children's capacity for abstraction and the mental models born of real-world experience into which they are already equipped to fit new information. He would have fifth graders using manipulatives in math class every bit as much as kindergartners instead of arming the fifth graders with formulae. How sad for the children. If progressive schools really want to honor each child's "individual learning style," then they should offer direct instruction to the kids who learn well that way.

Parents, beware: Despite the wonderfully warm and truly child-centered environments at many progressive schools, your children will in all likelihood NOT receive excellent math, reading, grammar and spelling instruction there. (See mathematicallycorrect.com for a discussion of the "math wars.") The philosophy at such schools is that learning facts should be supplanted by learning "how to learn." This view has been thoroughly discredited by cognitive scientists. At the very best progressive schools children may gain excellent writing skills, sensitivity to other people's perspectives and maybe even the ability to read for deep understanding (IF they can learn to read in the first place and are given sufficiently challenging material with sufficiently high expectations). They may also be well served emotionally at such schools (just as they may be at traditional schools despite what Kohn would have us believe). But for the sake of their children, every parent deserves to understand the shortcomings of these institutions, which are so appealing on the surface (like Kohn's book).

Our country's schools of education and the rest of the educational bureaucracy have done a great disservice to teachers and to our children. Kohn perpetuates the disservice. His approach is not to further parents' educational goals for their children, but to try to get them to change those goals or to believe that those goals can be achieved through unconventional, discredited means. I also daresay he is a professional iconoclast who profits from stirring up controversy.