DesignShare Review of…
The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and “Tougher Standards”

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999)
by Alfie Kohn

Teacher-turned-writer Alfie Kohn takes an opportunity in “The Schools Our Children Deserve” to challenge the two forces shaping American education today: the aggressive “back-to-basics” teaching approach that views children as passive and empty vessels into which facts and skills are poured, and the test-driven version which pushes for “tougher standards.” He illustrates how both of these methods reflect a fundamental lack of understanding about how and why children learn. He also describes how the best teachers help students become critical, creative thinkers rather than preparing them for Jeopardy.

With both of these educational approaches failing to suffice, Kohn confirms and promotes what progressive philosophers have proposed for years… multiage, interdisciplinary classrooms where students work on projects and actively construct their own knowledge, while teachers merely facilitate, challenging their students to abandon their previously passive role in the learning process and to think critically. In this utopia, grades would cease to exist, and would instead be replaced by performance reviews. Sort of like, well, the real world.

Admittedly, Kohn is preaching to the progressive choir, but there’s no denying that his arguments are steeped in research, or that our country’s education system has taken some desperately wrong turns. Kohn writes, “The difference between learning and achievement is hard enough to grasp; the difference between doing well and doing better than others is especially confusing in a society so obsessed with being Number One that the ideas of excellence and winning have been thoroughly conflated.”

From a design standpoint, perhaps the most favorable aspect of this book is a catalog in Kohn’s appendix of what a “good classroom” should look like, from the physical makeup to the attitudinal environment. Any parent, teacher, student or architect has a clear image of what a school looks like. It is the star amongst them that has a clear image of what a school should and could look like.

Visit the author’s website for more information about “The Schools Our Children Deserve” and some of his other titles: www.AlfieKohn.org.

“Parents as well as educators should read this remarkable book and rethink our most basic assumptions about the nature of learning and the possibilities of education in the 21^{st century.” — Library Journal}

“Alfie Kohn forces readers to ask what our children are doing in school and what skills they really need to succeed in life. If you’re a parent or concerned citizen, this book ought to be on your list.” — The Washington Times

“A very important achievement - a powerful, crisply written assault upon the mad excesses of the educational standards movement.” — Jonathan Kozol