ACT1 - Alfie Kohn's shadow

Alfie Kohn declared that competition does not deserve it's revered reputation with his book "No contest: the case against competition—why we lose in our race to win." (1986) I didn't discover it until last year.

This made so much sense to me with my personal experiences and interests, with how I felt, and what I'd observed in others and businesses in general. The basic idea, that cooperation was much more beneficial than competition, affected everything from schools, to sports, to businesses. Everything.

After that book, he later focused his writing on education and challenged the school systems to change for the students' benefit, and not the other way around. He currently lectures about every other week at various schools upon request through the USA, according to his website:

For me, his participation is very significant because it's about major changes in education, an institution that affects people from early in their lives when they typically aren't allowed to make decisions for themselves in our culture (USA). People are practically entrapped for a dozen years with little influence over their own education. The titles of his books are very telling, as revealed by these few:

• The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing (2006)
• What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated? And More Essays on Standards...
• The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classro...
• What to Look for in a Classroom... and Other Essays
• Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, ...

Education is worldwide, and though not necessarily consistent, any change has trouble getting a foothold. For example, while tracing resources from Exhibit A, Ethan Zuckerman's blog about the first 7 tips had a comment about schools in the developing world, from Wayan Vota of www.olpcnews.com:

This approach of trying to empower students by giving them new tools isn't just in developing nations, we've got that happening here in the USA, too. It's still very controversial for the developing world, and only recently making large strides here (hampered only by recent budget crunches).

What is equally controversial, though it has much research to back it up, is changing teacher/student communications by eliminating grading as a reward/punishment feedback system. I feel affecting the teacher/student relationship is more important than the tools. Since this is a matter of teaching techniques, once learned it can be freely shared, unlike the costs for tools such as computers. This means it can easily cross borders with potentially lower costs, and greater availability.

Preventing people's creativity from being crushed as Ken Robinson discussed at TED2006, while encouraging their development ensures a capable and creative learner leaves the classroom instead of a beaten-down drone. That is the empowerment for people to take on even new tools without an acquired hatred for learning, especially when someone has a say about their own education.

I admire Kohn's insight and hope to be able to share his influence with the education system here in Hawaii. However, I have no contacts and no stake in the local education system. It is commonly known to have a bad reputation nationwide, and has been getting a lot of attention because of the furloughs (no school almost every Friday) from budget constraints since last year.

My sister homeschools her kids in Texas and so I'm always passing on new info from various sources to her, but I'd like to help get some real change going on with the public school system since it's such an important sector in our culture and our society. They are certainly very dissatisfied with it here in Hawaii, to the point of the local paper tallying on the front page the number of days since the furloughs began. Change is desired, it's just a matter of getting in touch and finding out more about what's going on. Just haven't had the gumption to do it yet. Though, now, hmm...

Kohn is in the Boston area on the East coast, but I noticed he'll be on the West coast in August, and that would be just a small jump to Hawaii. So, if the local school system would be interested in his ideas, and if they are interested in having him visit, and if they can schedule him...

Mostly this is just potential, but being more involved is an idea I've been keeping in the back of my mind. It's just a matter of figuring out how much they are interested in changing their reputation in education, what direction they want to go, and whether there's any sources that match their interests or if they'll start from scratch (unlikely considering it's public funding?).

There are a couple of Alfie Kohn pages on Facebook I've been following on occasion, and he's got a Twitter feed which I didn't know about until today. The Twitter feed seems rather active, and professional so far. Definitely some interesting material to review. I'm kind of entertaining myself with the idea of sending an email from his website asking him his opinion about best use of closed school days. Hmm...