Re: Work, Play and Alfie Kohn

["Peggy McCartney" <pmccartney@plattscsd.org>]

  I have never interpreted Mr. Kohn in the manner you have.    He has
made many contributions to the field of education.There has been a
decline in creative expression since the standardization movement
and now the American Medical Association has agreed that more time
needs to be allocated to play for young children.   Tests are creating
too much stress!!!   We will not know all the ramifications for many
years.   I  wonder why you, Mr. Casey,  are so critical of Mr. Kohn.

>http://edwize.org/work-play-and-alfie-kohn
>
>Reading anti-homework evangelist Alfie Kohn is a very predictable
experience, not all that different from taking the same bus, on the same
route, over and over again. No matter the specific destination, no
matter the particular educational topic, it is not very difficult to predict in
considerable detail what Kohn will have to say on it, before you have
read his first sentence. This is so because there is a simple formula
which underlies all of his writing on education.
>
>For Kohn, there are two modes of human activity around which one
could organize education ? work and play. In Kohn?s hands, work and
play are a polarized dualism: play embodies the spontaneous, creative
and liberating side of human activity, voluntarily undertaken, while
work is alienated and oppressive drudgery, done in the service of the
?other.? We play because it gives us pleasure; we work because we are
forced to do so, usually to provide the essentials of life. Real learning
takes place, Kohn believes, when we are engaged in creative, self-
directed play, and not stuck in alienated work.
>
>Kohn is the latest incarnation of an ultra-libertarian, anarchistic
tradition of educational thought, perhaps best represented by A. S.
Neill?s Summerhill. Every educational issue he has addressed has
been seen through the same prism of the anarchic celebration of play
and derogation of work. Take assessments. Virtually every test and
every form of assessment ? not just excessive and misused
standardized testing ? is a form of oppressive work to Kohn. Even a
rubric for a performance based assessment is something to be
avoided, because it imposes external standards on the creative act of
writing or speaking.
>
>The distinction between standards and standardization ? so central to
most educators ? is a distinction without a difference to Kohn; for him, 
standards lead invariably to standardization and the stifling of creative
play. And Kohn?s latest obsession, homework, is understood literally,
as work at home. It has to be boring and unimaginative toil.
>
>Kohn?s educational philosophy is problematic in a number of
important respects. There is a role for play in schooling, but it is a
developmentally appropriate role, not a universal one. Play is a central
component of early childhood education, when students are
transitioning into schooling. Among other functions, it is fundamental in
socializing young children into their roles as students. One of the
negative effects in the current NCLB induced climate has been the
diminishment of play time, as academic subjects are more and more
pushed down into early childhood grades ? the ?kinder? is increasingly
being taken out of ?kindergarten.? But as students develop, socially and
academically, their activities should assume more and more the form of
intellectual labor, and the role of play should diminish.
>
>The transition to academic work can, of course, involve sheer
drudgery, the robotic memorization of disconnected facts and the
mindless completion of meaningless exercises. What, after all, is the
infamous work sheet, if not just the latter? But there is no law that says 
academic work must be so, that it can not be meaningful and
purposeful intellectual labor. This would seem a rather obvious, almost
commonplace observation, but it is still lost on Kohn. When he
discusses homework, for example, he provides only examples of
poorly conceived and thoughtless ?busy work? assignments, as if this
was something intrinsic in this category of work, and nothing else was
possible. Yet would this be a fair characterization of a Social Studies
homework assignment that had students read selections from oral
histories of life under American slavery, and then write a poem or a rap
song about the experiences of enslaved African-Americans? Or
another Social Studies assignment that had student
>s read about the First World War and the conditions on ?the front,? and
then write a letter home from a young soldier to his family? Don?t these 
assignments, which could be multiplied endlessly with similar
examples, require imaginative, thoughtful intellectual work on the part
of students, and involve real learning?
>
>In fact, Kohn?s polarized dualism of creative, imaginative, self-directed
play, on the one side, and alienated, oppressive and thoughtless work,
on the other side, excludes the middle term which is the actual ground
of education ? meaningful, purposeful intellectual labor. The most
profound of educational thinkers, from Socrates to Dewey, have always
understood it in such terms. What American students need is not
freedom from homework in a world of perpetual play, but homework
thoughtfully crafted to engage their minds and their imagination.
>
>
>
>-------------------------------------------------------
>Unsubscribe ARN-L:
>http://interversity.org/lists/arn-l/subscribe.html
>





_______________________________________________________
_________
Sent via the WebMail system at plattsweb.plattscsd.org