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16: Adopting Progressive Ed. w/ Alfie Kohn
18 Plays7 years ago
We're excited and honored to speak with renowned educator Alfie Kohn surrounding his views on progressive education and what steps educators can take to implement his ideas. We spoke about the ideology surrounding Kohn's views on grading and standardized testing, among others: its relevance to today's world and why it's needed.
Kohn has authored an extensive amount of articles on the importance of progressive practice, including his collection of works The Myth of the Spoiled Child, Feel-Bad Education, Schooling Beyond Measure, Punished by Rewards, The Homework Myth, and more. Kohn is well known for his views on eliminating competition such as grading in schools, eliminating standardized testing, emphasizing the removal of automatic (expected) rewards for positive behavior, and truly having a relevant, authentic caring system that focuses on education over content cramming.
You can find Kohn's works on his website, featuring articles, videos, blogs, audiobooks, and more (many for free!). We highly encourage any educator not familiar with Kohn's work to read his collections of works and dig deeper into his lectures on YouTube or via his website.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome everyone to Things Fall Apart, our podcast here at the Human Restoration Project.
00:00:15
Speaker
I am Michael.
00:00:16
Speaker
And I'm Chris.
00:00:18
Speaker
And for usual, we're going to intro here with a little bit of sort of background info of what is currently going on.
00:00:24
Speaker
So today we're going to be joined by Alfie Kohn here shortly.
00:00:28
Speaker
Alfie Kohn.
00:00:29
Speaker
probably is one of the lead inspirations for the Human Restoration Project in terms of what we talk about.
00:00:36
Speaker
Many of his ideas are in line with the exact things that we believe are important.
00:00:41
Speaker
So putting research into practice, getting rid of the competitive nature of schooling, focusing on children with love and support, and just overall humanizing
Humanizing Education vs. Competitive Schooling
00:00:51
Speaker
education.
00:00:51
Speaker
Stop focusing on competitive grading and pitting our kids against each other and ranking them and averaging them.
00:00:57
Speaker
And instead, focus on them as individuals and engaging their passions and learning to learn, to gather a love of learning.
00:01:05
Speaker
So we're super looking forward to talking to him about that.
00:01:08
Speaker
Right.
00:01:09
Speaker
Some things coming up as a part of the Human Restoration Project.
00:01:12
Speaker
We do offer materials in addition to our discussions.
00:01:15
Speaker
Next month, we're introducing a progressive guidebook, if you will.
00:01:19
Speaker
It's not an end-all, be-all guide to progressive education, but rather a summary of different things that
00:01:26
Speaker
we think are worth thinking about.
00:01:27
Speaker
That's a lot of thinking.
00:01:29
Speaker
So the progressive guidebook will be just kind of an overview of what progressive education is and a huge documented list of all the different possible things you could look at in order to learn more about them.
00:01:42
Speaker
Also, we have some resources already available.
00:01:45
Speaker
which will probably relate to what we're talking about today, such as a reflective development piece over the subjectivity of grading to learn more about how grading practices can have negative effects on children, as well as different projects, such as the Quest Project, which is a fairly large booklet surrounding activities, reflections, and discussion that you can have with your students surrounding recognizing their passions and why it might be difficult to find them.
00:02:13
Speaker
So check those out.
00:02:14
Speaker
Which is all free, by the way, on the website.
00:02:17
Speaker
Yep, it's all free.
00:02:19
Speaker
Thanks to our Patreon supporters.
00:02:21
Speaker
So a special shout out to Skylar Prim and Aaron Flanagan for helping us out.
00:02:27
Speaker
And if you want to contribute to our Patreon page, you could do so for as little as a dollar
Radical Educational Reform with Alfie Kohn
00:02:32
Speaker
a month.
00:02:32
Speaker
You can check us out on humanrestorationproject.org to find research and resources, thoughts, podcasts, all sorts of different kinds of stuff pertaining to progressive education.
00:02:48
Speaker
Today, we're joined by Alfie Kohn, a renowned educator who has authored over 100 articles on the importance of progressive practice, including his collection of works, The Myth of a Spoiled Child, Feel Bad Education, Schooling Beyond Measure, Punished by Rewards, and The Homework Myth.
00:03:04
Speaker
You can find almost all of Alfie's lectures, blogs, and thoughts on his website for free at alfiekohn.org.
00:03:10
Speaker
Kohn is well known for his views on eliminating competitions such as grading in schools, eliminating standardized testing,
00:03:16
Speaker
and truly having a relevant, authentic, caring system that focuses on education over content.
00:03:21
Speaker
You're focused a lot on educational reform movements, getting away from buzzwords such as growth mindset and grit.
00:03:27
Speaker
And you talked a lot about changing systemic issues in education.
00:03:30
Speaker
So removing competitive grading, removing standardized testing.
00:03:33
Speaker
You're trying to find ways to reinvigorate education rather than making the old system slightly more functional.
00:03:41
Speaker
So how do you think we can effectively communicate your message to the majority of educators who care about students but are instead focusing on improving a system that needs more radical change?
00:03:50
Speaker
Well, I think there's two issues that should be teased apart there.
00:03:54
Speaker
One is how radical or moderate the change is that we make, inviting people to ask the root questions, not how do you tweak grading, for example, to include students.
00:04:07
Speaker
fashionable new variations like standards-based grading, but instead ask the question, why are we giving grades at all given what the research finds is the effect of grades, and so on for other issues as well, homework or the way the classroom is arranged.
00:04:25
Speaker
All of that could be categorized as pushing deeper with the scope and depth of the questions we ask.
00:04:36
Speaker
But that should be distinguished from the other issue that you raised briefly, which is a tendency to avoid structural causes of problems altogether and focus instead on fixing the kid.
00:04:50
Speaker
So, for example, when we talk about
00:04:53
Speaker
making kids more persistent, giving them more self-discipline, making them acquire a growth mindset.
00:05:01
Speaker
Here, we're not even asking moderate-level questions about the system.
00:05:06
Speaker
We're saying the problem is in the student's head, and we need to change their mindset or attitude or orientation so they can
00:05:17
Speaker
will persist longer and be more successful at whatever crap we're throwing at them.
00:05:23
Speaker
And that's not just a matter of turning up the dial with respect to the radicalism of the fixes that we provide, but shifting our gaze from student to structure.
00:05:45
Speaker
And the way to bring educators in on that is to say exactly that.
00:05:50
Speaker
Invite them to share their experiences once they have this schema, this sort of mental model that may help them to understand what they've been experiencing and doing in a new
Resistance to Progressive Ideas in Education
00:06:02
Speaker
way.
00:06:02
Speaker
So based off of that, and I love that answer, you have all of these sources that back up your statements.
00:06:08
Speaker
I mean, there's hundreds, thousands of research articles that showcase that
00:06:12
Speaker
So why do you think it is that teachers, administration, parents, community members, teaching, training programs, anything like that is not really embracing these ideas, at least at a national, wide-scale level?
00:06:33
Speaker
Well, when I do a presentation, I almost always ask that question or a version of it to see what the parents and teachers there come up with.
00:06:42
Speaker
And I get a range of answers, though they predictably fall into several kind of categories.
00:06:50
Speaker
One is that real progressive education, which is not just about ending traditional practices, but about
00:06:59
Speaker
a number of other related shifts, including helping students to create meaning rather than just memorize facts and practice skills, giving students more say about what it is they're doing, having an educational environment that is more about collaboration than about
00:07:21
Speaker
competition or even self-sufficiency.
00:07:24
Speaker
All of these things challenge basic assumptions, not just in schools, but in our culture.
00:07:31
Speaker
And they are fundamentally viewed as well subversive, as unsettling to us based on what we've been raised to assume.
00:07:43
Speaker
And so there's a strong undercurrent toward
00:07:49
Speaker
conservative beliefs that have been accepted as mainstream wisdom in our culture.
00:07:54
Speaker
That's one answer.
00:07:56
Speaker
Another one is that there's a lot of fear.
00:08:01
Speaker
There's fear on the part of teachers about whether they'll get to keep their jobs, about whether they're gonna be attacked by their administrators or by parents and so on.
00:08:13
Speaker
And so they tend to play it safe, understandably.
00:08:17
Speaker
And in turn, the administrators have their own fears there, and so do the parents.
00:08:23
Speaker
Another kind of answer is that it takes time and talent and care and courage to do the kind of teaching that we're talking about here.
00:08:38
Speaker
And so there's, apart from what's unsettling about the ideological components of traditional education,
00:08:47
Speaker
It's just harder to do.
00:08:49
Speaker
I mean, basically any idiot can stay a chapter ahead of students in a textbook and just march through to cover a curriculum that's already set or handed down from above.
00:09:04
Speaker
It takes a much more skilled and experienced educator to help students discover because that requires a deeper understanding of
00:09:17
Speaker
the content being taught and a deep in the bone proficiency at teaching itself, not just the curriculum, but pedagogy, what it means to focus less on what you're doing and teaching than on what it means to learn and to facilitate learning.
00:09:41
Speaker
So all of these may help to explain
00:09:46
Speaker
why we seem to be trapped.
00:09:48
Speaker
And then, of course, there are larger political and economic explanations for the persistence of dysfunctional teaching approaches that shouldn't be, I guess, waved away.
Economic Influences on Education
00:10:01
Speaker
The people who have most of the power to impose mandates on teachers are often those who know the least about how children learn.
00:10:13
Speaker
If you're a billionaire like Bill Gates, you don't have to know a damn thing about education.
00:10:18
Speaker
You can buy the Common Core curriculum and make sure that that's imposed from above, which is pretty much what happened.
00:10:29
Speaker
If you're a politician, you get to decide whether there's high-stakes standardized testing.
00:10:36
Speaker
You know nothing about it.
00:10:38
Speaker
the best way to teach or to assess and so on.
00:10:41
Speaker
And then there's the, I guess, larger question I always think about, which is if progressive education helps students to acquire not only the capacity, but the disposition, the desire to think critically about systems in which they find themselves to be true active thinkers in a democratic culture, is that really important?
00:11:08
Speaker
what the people in charge want.
00:11:10
Speaker
I mean, that's why when politicians and corporate executives make speeches about education reform, they almost never talk about democracy in a meaningful sense or what's in the best interest of children.
00:11:25
Speaker
They talk about education as an investment.
00:11:28
Speaker
They talk about the competitive economy
00:11:32
Speaker
global economy in the 21st century.
00:11:34
Speaker
They talk about schooling as if it's nothing more than a means to an end, and the end is about beating people who live in other countries.
00:11:43
Speaker
So if that's what's driving education, is thinking about dollars and cents, thinking about winning and losing, well, then you're going to have exactly the kind of traditional approach to education that we have.
00:11:58
Speaker
The idea of fear is something that Chris and I just talked about recently, which I agree with completely.
00:12:03
Speaker
I don't think anyone wouldn't.
00:12:04
Speaker
One of the biggest impediments that stand in the way of, I think, many administrators, many teachers, and even many parents is most certainly fear of progressive education and what that could look like.
00:12:16
Speaker
As you mentioned, it's
00:12:17
Speaker
kind of that axiom of it was good enough for me, or that's not the blank that I know.
00:12:23
Speaker
And that, you know, that connects to so much.
00:12:25
Speaker
So even music is what comes to mind immediately.
00:12:28
Speaker
How many times I've heard older generations tell me that, you know, music isn't the same or whatever.
00:12:33
Speaker
It's not the same as it was for them.
00:12:35
Speaker
And there's always a fear of change.
00:12:38
Speaker
The idea of you brought it up as money.
00:12:39
Speaker
And that's something that I think we were just talking yesterday to Ted Dintersmith.
00:12:43
Speaker
We had a podcast and that's something that I thought was very,
00:12:46
Speaker
prominent in the lack of people choosing progressive education in their schools, such as teachers, administrators, etc.
00:12:54
Speaker
I think it's money has a lot to do with it.
00:12:56
Speaker
You mentioning just Bill Gates and the Common Core and how, man, I remember when that got rolled out, it was incredible how many textbooks that he owns.
00:13:04
Speaker
So the Pearson company, of course, was already ready to roll out all of their
00:13:09
Speaker
DVDs and books regarding Common Core, even though it just came out.
00:13:13
Speaker
But even more so, I do feel like that there are... And this, I don't mean to sound shrewd, I guess, or flippant, but I do feel like when it comes to growth mindset or insert the blank mindset, there are a lot of people who can make a decent payroll off of not...
00:13:29
Speaker
inviting progressive education into the classroom, but instead kind of gussying up standard education or very traditional education by introducing games or fun ways to remember.
00:13:42
Speaker
You're doing the same thing, but you're trying to disguise it as much as possible, in turn, making a profit off of silly books or pamphlets or worksheets and things of that nature.
00:13:53
Speaker
In many ways, I think that your philosophy of offering
00:13:57
Speaker
the good news for free on your website.
00:13:59
Speaker
I mean, pretty much everything is there for free.
00:14:01
Speaker
I think it's very valuable and very important.
00:14:03
Speaker
Sure.
00:14:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:04
Speaker
I mean, for growth mindset and other things, I'm not sure that's the best explanation.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah, there's a program you can buy, but I think that deals more with sort of ideological assumptions.
00:14:16
Speaker
But there are certainly other realms where you want to follow the money, say, the direction of reading instruction.
00:14:24
Speaker
where as Dick Allington and others have pointed out, the best approach to teaching kids to read according to the research is to have them make choices among a rich literacy curriculum that features real books of the kind you find in libraries and bookstores.
00:14:42
Speaker
But publishers make a lot more money with basils and primers and textbooks and so on.
00:14:53
Speaker
that contain a very different kind of skills-based curriculum with little snippets of prose that the kids don't care about, didn't choose, and so on.
00:15:05
Speaker
And so there's a big push toward that way of teaching reading because nobody gets rich off the way that's more authentic and more effective.
00:15:14
Speaker
So based off of what you've written and kind of based off of this discussion so far, obviously there is a lot of pressure that's placed on educators
00:15:23
Speaker
That want to incorporate these ideas, but I mean, there's a lot of factors that work against taking those steps.
00:15:29
Speaker
So what do you feel like then is one step maybe teachers could take tomorrow that would revolutionize their classroom?
00:15:37
Speaker
Is there anything that they could just do and they could just start helping?
00:15:42
Speaker
They could ask students what interests them, what questions they have about themselves and the world, and then slowly construct a curriculum with students, not just for them, that is centered on the student's own questions about the world, which would tend to be interdisciplinary.
00:16:06
Speaker
That is, you draw from different fields in trying to
00:16:10
Speaker
find answers to those questions, to create projects that make sense of the world, as opposed to offering a list of facts, a bunch of knowledge to cram into them sequentially, or to divide up social studies from English and English from math in the more traditional way, to shift from a doing-to classroom to a working-with classroom.
00:16:39
Speaker
to shift from a bunch of facts to a quest for meaning is to be, I mean, it sounds easy when I reduce it to catchphrases, but in fact, it's terribly hard to do if you haven't done it before, and sometimes even if you have.
00:16:56
Speaker
But if the teacher's mantra is talk less, ask more, with the sense that we're going to try to create a curriculum that's meaningful,
00:17:09
Speaker
then you're able to make other related changes and to do away with a lot of stuff that's propping up the old system.
00:17:20
Speaker
For example, if you give me a diet, if I'm a student, you give me a diet of worksheets and textbooks and quizzes and homework and grades,
00:17:36
Speaker
and I've had nothing to say about what I'm learning or with whom or how, then I'm not going to be particularly interested in this.
00:17:45
Speaker
And so then you're going to accuse me of not being motivated or having the right attitude, and you'll then award me points for doing something or stickers or grades or punish me
00:17:59
Speaker
in various ways for not doing what I'm supposed to do and being on task.
Creating Engaging, Student-Centered Curricula
00:18:04
Speaker
And then you'll claim that these bribes and threats are necessary and that it's utopian or unrealistic to think we can do without them given the way kids are today.
00:18:14
Speaker
But in fact, if you start with an authentically engaging curriculum that begins by eliciting the questions and interests that students already come in with, then you don't have to treat them like pets.
00:18:29
Speaker
with grades and various other rewards and punishments.
00:18:33
Speaker
And so your classroom can get better in other respects from having moved in that more substantive direction rather than starting out by saying, oh, I read a book that rewards and punishments aren't good.
00:18:45
Speaker
Let's get rid of them, which may make sense.
00:18:48
Speaker
But now because of the way you're teaching and what you're teaching, if you're a traditionalist,
00:18:56
Speaker
which most teachers are, even if they wouldn't describe themselves that way, because of what you're teaching and how you're teaching, the kids have very little intrinsic motivation to do what you're giving them.
00:19:11
Speaker
So now if you take away the extrinsic motivators, the artificial inducements, the carrots and sticks, they got nothing.
00:19:18
Speaker
That's why you have to start with the more fundamental questions of the teaching and learning.
00:19:33
Speaker
I don't want to sound too cynical, but I feel like the question almost begs itself to be asked, which is,
00:20:03
Speaker
this reform movement towards experiential learning or more passion, the passion based classrooms or inquiry based classrooms has been around for, I mean, over a hundred years.
00:20:12
Speaker
Now you have like Dewey and Montessori and Holt, who have you.
00:20:16
Speaker
And it seems like since then, really what we've done is just doubled down on the traditional norms that kind of started all this with, with Thorndike or whoever, you know, is, is preaching this, this Prussian system to kind of get kids in line.
00:20:31
Speaker
So,
00:20:32
Speaker
where do you feel like is going to be the point that this really sees a drastic shift because donald trump is president um you've written about kind of how that reflects the culture that we live in and and arguably the standardized testing system is bigger than it ever has been is it going to take a catastrophe one singular event in order to change all this or where do you feel like change will occur um i i don't know i'm i'm not very good at predictions um
00:21:01
Speaker
and prediction type questions sort of assume that history plays itself out like a movie.
00:21:08
Speaker
We're sitting there passively and watching, and you're asking me to guess what's coming next in the second reel.
00:21:13
Speaker
I don't know.
00:21:15
Speaker
I'm not good at guessing what's going to happen, but I also kind of reject the model that assumes that things will happen of their own accord.
00:21:24
Speaker
I think it depends on what we do, not to be too simplistic about it, I hope.
00:21:31
Speaker
Whether 10 years from now we're still beating kids to death with standardized tests depends on us.
00:21:41
Speaker
It depends on us as educators, as parents, and as citizens.
00:21:45
Speaker
If we're able to build an opt-out movement for parents to boycott the tests and to follow the lead of courageous teachers who have declined to give them and certainly to teach
00:22:00
Speaker
to them.
00:22:02
Speaker
Then history will point, and the answer to your question will be very different than if we shrug our shoulders and say, well, this is just life.
00:22:08
Speaker
This is the way things are.
00:22:10
Speaker
That train has left the station, et cetera.
00:22:12
Speaker
You know, that will point in a different direction.
00:22:15
Speaker
The same thing is true of what teacher educators do in universities.
00:22:19
Speaker
Are they preparing young teachers to fit in and mindlessly capitulate to moronic mandates?
00:22:26
Speaker
Or are they preparing young teachers to be reflective rebels?
00:22:31
Speaker
And that's true with respect to any number of these things.
00:22:36
Speaker
Are teachers going to first look at a bunch of demands?
00:22:42
Speaker
You've got to give this much homework a night, even though research fails to find any benefit to any kind of homework before high school.
00:22:51
Speaker
and newer research is calling into question the value of homework even in high school.
00:22:57
Speaker
So making kids work what amounts to a second shift doesn't help academically, and it does nothing but harm in terms of their attitudes about learning.
00:23:08
Speaker
So are teachers going to take a mandate to give homework
00:23:16
Speaker
and shrug and say, oh, well, that's what's expected of me.
00:23:19
Speaker
I'm going to do it.
00:23:20
Speaker
Or are they going to respond by saying, this doesn't make sense.
00:23:24
Speaker
So my first impulse is going to be to reach out to my colleagues, to organize, to mobilize, to provide the administrators and parents with the relevant arguments and evidence, and to insist on doing what makes sense.
00:23:41
Speaker
You know, we could...
00:23:44
Speaker
repeat variations of that same question, that same fork in the road, this or that, with regard to any number of aspects of education.
00:23:55
Speaker
And that will determine the answer to your original question of what will things look like X years from now.
00:24:00
Speaker
Essentially, it's extremely open-ended if-then.
00:24:03
Speaker
It sounds like your prediction is the best non-prediction, I think, that you could probably go for in that regard.
00:24:10
Speaker
That said, to switch the topic a bit here, you are most certainly, at least Chris and I would agree, is one of the most abundant creators of reality.
00:24:20
Speaker
resources, your website is just full of articles, blogs, and then your books, your essays.
00:24:26
Speaker
It's extremely overwhelming in a sense, but it's just not much more needs to be said.
00:24:32
Speaker
So without trying to say, what would you suggest from yourself?
00:24:36
Speaker
I'm curious, aside from your own work, which is I know it's going to be tough to do in a way, what maybe books or resources might you recommend to educators and administrators looking to change their
00:24:48
Speaker
the paradigm or change their mindset, looking to try to think differently about the fear they currently have.
00:24:54
Speaker
Oh, I, I, I wondered where that question was going to end.
00:24:57
Speaker
And like, with respect to what being the answer, you know, if somebody says, what should I read?
00:25:01
Speaker
I say, well, it depends.
00:25:02
Speaker
You know, I love, I love being to the extent I can be a human bibliography, but I need some guidance here.
00:25:08
Speaker
You want to talk about what great primary grade math teaching looks like?
00:25:14
Speaker
You know, I got one answer for you.
00:25:15
Speaker
How to,
00:25:17
Speaker
Had a whole democratic class meetings, I got another one.
00:25:21
Speaker
Why homework doesn't make sense and so on.
00:25:23
Speaker
Each question, each topic calls for its own sort of resources so I can point you to the writers who've influenced me.
00:25:31
Speaker
But around fear, gosh, I don't know.
00:25:34
Speaker
I'm not sure there's a simple – I wouldn't know how to write a book that just says here's how to deal with your fear.
00:25:42
Speaker
because it depends what are you afraid of and why, two very important questions.
00:25:48
Speaker
Some teachers are just, I think, temperamentally fearful, reticent, and inclined, by the way, to censor themselves so that they can't even point to, if I started having class meetings in place of using god-awful manipulative words,
00:26:09
Speaker
management programs like PBIS or various discipline approaches that treat kids like pets, you'll be fired.
00:26:21
Speaker
Everybody's got to be on board with that.
00:26:23
Speaker
In many cases, they could get away certainly within their own classrooms of doing things that were much more respectful of kids, much more constructive and productive, useful and nice.
00:26:37
Speaker
But they don't because they're afraid of everything.
00:26:40
Speaker
And so that self-censorship probably reflects a temperament that existed before they set foot in a classroom.
00:26:52
Speaker
Others are appropriately concerned based on the history of what's happened in their schools.
00:27:02
Speaker
And so...
00:27:05
Speaker
question is if you're right that you can't get away with X, then here's how you might be able to do a version, a dilute version of X. And so there's not going to be one source, one reference that says, here's why that's happening and here's what to do about it.
00:27:22
Speaker
It will depend on the particular kind of change you're considering and are afraid of implementing.
00:27:31
Speaker
And even more, it will depend on the particular individuals and situation you work with and for and the environment and the situation you find yourselves in.
00:27:42
Speaker
I mean, I get emails through my website all the time, you know, what do I do about this?
00:27:47
Speaker
And I have to say, I don't know.
00:27:49
Speaker
I don't know what your tolerance for risk is.
00:27:52
Speaker
And I don't know what your principal is like, whether your principal is secretly on your side and would like to help you or not or
00:27:59
Speaker
I don't know if you've got 20 other teachers in the building who feel the way you are, and if you marched yourselves into the principal's office together politely but disappointedly, you might be able to say, let's get rid of accelerated reader, which is killing his interest in reading.
00:28:18
Speaker
And here's why, and here's the research, and here's what we propose to replace it with.
00:28:23
Speaker
That might work.
00:28:24
Speaker
So I can't give a single simple answer to the question, although asking a question that deals with overcoming our fears, I think, makes sense because that's a good door to open or to put it, use a different metaphor.
00:28:38
Speaker
It's a good lens through which to look to understand how do you make change?
00:28:43
Speaker
Exactly.
00:28:44
Speaker
Exactly.
00:28:44
Speaker
That's a good point.
00:28:45
Speaker
This is going to refer back to something we were talking about earlier.
00:28:48
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And I realize all these questions kind of have a similar guise to them, if you will.
00:28:53
Speaker
But I think it's important to
00:28:54
Speaker
hit this point.
00:28:55
Speaker
So in one of your most recent blogs and something that you talk about a lot on your Twitter page is about Donald Trump's presidency and how it correlates to our obsession with competition and rivalry, success, success being defined as being rich and famous.
00:29:09
Speaker
Could you go into further detail about how our society reflects this narrative that traditional education imposes on our children and is having cooperation and love in the classroom
00:29:24
Speaker
you think going to be enough to change those cultural norms?
00:29:28
Speaker
Well, I can answer the last question quickly.
00:29:33
Speaker
No, it's not enough.
00:29:35
Speaker
It's necessary, but not sufficient.
00:29:37
Speaker
We have to look at the structural barriers to adopting a climate of cooperation
Critique of Competitive Culture in Education
00:29:44
Speaker
and love, as well as what else needs to happen once people try to move in that direction.
00:29:53
Speaker
So, um,
00:29:56
Speaker
Think about cooperation or collaboration as two steps beyond where we are in many respects.
00:30:04
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One step beyond would be not be particularly cooperative, but at least not to try to defeat one another.
00:30:11
Speaker
We're in a situation now that isn't just not cooperative.
00:30:14
Speaker
It's not even individualistic in some respects.
00:30:18
Speaker
It doesn't say you do your thing and I do mine.
00:30:20
Speaker
It says my success comes at the price of your failure.
00:30:26
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It's worse than the absence of cooperation.
00:30:30
Speaker
It sets the game up as mutually exclusive goal attainment.
00:30:35
Speaker
So it's bad enough that we give rewards to kids for doing well, which undermines interest in the learning itself.
00:30:44
Speaker
We give something worse than rewards.
00:30:46
Speaker
We give awards.
00:30:49
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An award is a reward that has been made artificially scarce.
00:30:53
Speaker
So if I get one, you can't.
00:30:55
Speaker
And the existence of things like spelling bees and publicly posted grades or grading on a curve or ranking high school students or awards assemblies and the like, all of these are set up to teach kids other people are obstacles to your own success.
00:31:16
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And thus you would naturally wish them ill, hope they'll screw up.
00:31:22
Speaker
Not because you're a neurotic or sadistic person, but because adults have set up a structure that's not about succeeding, it's about winning, which means succeeding at the price of other people's failure.
00:31:35
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So we have to understand that when we have co-op competitive games, indoor and outdoor games, when we have spelling bees and geography bees, when we take...
00:31:48
Speaker
any activity, painting or singing in a chorus, whatever it is, and turn it into a contest where the goal is to make other people fail.
00:32:02
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When it's now about victory, not about success, everyone ultimately loses, even the winners.
00:32:11
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And that was the very first book I wrote a very long time ago, a book called No Contest, The Case Against Competition.
00:32:19
Speaker
And I've moved on to other topics, but this keeps haunting me.
00:32:23
Speaker
It keeps following me around because the toxically competitive aspect of our culture, including our schooling, the way we raise and teach, socialize our children, threads its way through the
00:32:38
Speaker
almost every other topic that we come across.
00:32:41
Speaker
I mean, Donald Trump is just an ideal type, a perfect representation of the logical conclusion, the reductio ad absurdum of this, where cooperation is viewed as weakness, where the goal in life is this desperate, neurotic need to prove your superiority over everyone you come across.
00:33:06
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He is like a funhouse mirror, a distorted, exaggerated version of the culture that raised him, which is great.
00:33:18
Speaker
I was using Trump as an example long before he thought, hey, how about if I run for president?
00:33:23
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Back when we just knew him as a grifter, a desperately grifter.
00:33:33
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You know, absurd clown.
00:33:36
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Yeah, that must be nightmarish for you.
00:33:39
Speaker
Yeah, but even back then it was clear where he was just trying to pull a con job on the latest casino or whatever he was doing.
00:33:49
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That here is proof that you can be rich and famous without being a successful human being anymore.
00:33:59
Speaker
in any moral or psychological sense.
00:34:02
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So he's a good example of what I call negative learning, which is where you pay careful attention to folks doing horrendous things and say, I need to take notes here so I can be exactly the opposite and raise our kids.
00:34:19
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I even had this idea last year to write a book called Raising an Un-Trump for Parents.
00:34:26
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You know, just make a list of every aspect of his personality.
00:34:30
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And that's exactly the opposite of what we want for our children.
00:34:34
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So how do we go about helping them to be otherwise?
00:34:37
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And part of it, but not all of it, deals with the issue you raised.
00:34:41
Speaker
How do we move away from this pathological fixation on defeating the people around us and ideally move that next step as well towards seeing others as potential allies and collaborators?
00:35:07
Speaker
We want to connect with you and hear your thoughts.
00:35:09
Speaker
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00:35:16
Speaker
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00:35:23
Speaker
Thanks again.