Re: Kohn: Case against 'tougher standards'

["ElsaHaas" <ElsaHaas@si.rr.com>]

Kohn says in the article, "Back in 1959, public education critic John Holt
wrote..." 

John (who was in 1959 still a schools critic, not yet a homeschool advocate)
always made it a point to clarify that he wasn't writing just about public
schools, or just about schools for mostly poor or minority kids. 

In fact, if the quote comes from his earliest book, How Children Fail (and
I'm almost certain it does), one strength of that book  is that it isn't a
theoretical one, but started out as a diary John kept while teaching at a
highly regarded private school for mostly white, mostly fairly well-off
kids.

One of my favorite passages in How Children Fail is about the fifth-grader
who doesn't want her classmates to think her stupid during a game of Twenty
Questions in which the category is "Countries." 

She doesn't understand why it makes little sense to guess a country early in
the game (rather than narrowing down the options by asking something like,
"Is it in the Western Hemisphere?"). But she knows that if she guesses, her
classmates will hiss at her, "Don't guess!" So she chooses to ask, "Is it
shaped like a boot?" instead of "Is it Italy?" 

This is a tactic that John came to call "the disguised guess." The girl's
intellectual efforts in school are focused not on finding the answers to
intellectual questions, but on devising the strategies that will protect her
from shame. 

This is the way it is for most kids in most schools, though we adults are
mostly blind to it.     

John started keeping the diary that eventually became the book How Children
Fail in order to figure out, among other things, why many of his students
struggled in school; why even the ones who didn't struggle were unable to
remember what they had supposedly learned in order to get their good grades;
why those who did remember the material couldn't apply it to anything
practical; and why kids generally seemed smarter outside of school than in. 

As a homeschooler (really an unschooler) who worked for Holt
Associates/Growing Without Schooling about twenty years ago, I like Alfie
Kohn's work and I think he picked a good quote for this article. But I don't
want John's work to be confused with that of many other school reformers. 

John described in painstaking detail exactly what happens in the typical
classroom (and in many homes) to damage the innate intelligence of children.
It's the same sort of brain freeze (my term, not his) that you might find
yourself in if somebody suddenly asked you in front of a room full of
people, "What's the capital of [some place you think you ought to know the
capital of]?" - or any other question that you'd be embarrassed not to know
the answer to. Kids are subjected to this constantly. It short circuits
their thinking or reroutes it along unproductive pathways. 

Not that John thought schools could or should be eliminated entirely. His
books can be useful even for teachers working in traditional schools, and he
described some ways in which schools can be improved and teachers within
them can help that happen. He did come to advocate homeschooling (and
especially unschooling), but as a way for individual parents to do something
NOW for their own children, rather than waiting for the schools to change.

How Children Fail is worth reading for anyone, even if you're a teacher or
parent who sees no way out of school. 

I'll read the rest of the article when I can - I just had to say that right
away. 

Elsa Haas      

-----Original Message-----
From: arn-l-owner@interversity.org [mailto:arn-l-owner@interversity.org] On
Behalf Of Monty Neill
Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2007 10:21 AM
To: ndsgroup@yahoogroups.com; RScriticalteach; care-strategy;
care@yahoogroups.com; ARN-state@yahoogroups.com; ARN-L; arn2-strategy
Subject: [arn-l] Kohn: Case against 'tougher standards'