Alfie Kohn is not insane

January 10, 2004

Time, Quantity and Quality.

If you can manage to avoid these three animals, then you will have no use for grades in school. Alfie Kohn has made quite a name for himself with his "No Testing, No Grades" mantra, so we can only assume that he hasn't had any run-ins with those three beasts.

We try to spend as much time as possible not thinking of Alfie Kohn, but both Joanne Jacobs and Kimberly Swygert posted snappy reviews of an anti-grading article from Macleans, which quoted the specious expert, and we need some catharsis!

We get quite irritated at someone like Kohn, who clearly benefited from the education (complete with testing and grades, natch) he received, saying that those things are harmful to other people's kids.

Life is full of performance standards. Get used to it.

Let's take a kid's paper route (only if it doesn't violate local child labor laws):

1. The papers must be delivered by a certain time in the morning, or Jones in the brownstone will be really peeved.
2. If X number (quantity) of papers are delivered each morning, you'll earn $Y.
3. Lastly, the papers must be bagged if it's raining, so listen to the weather the night before to give yourself extra time. And keep the papers out of Ma Cratchit's rosebushes! (quality)

Heaven forbid we should give our students tests and grades based on concepts that have value in the real world! For example, we recently administered a High School Geometry mid-term exam, which had a 90 minute time limit, a certain passing cutoff score, and yes, when writing a formal proof of congruent triangles, quality does matter.

But if Kohn wants to talk about the bottom line (translation: money), he and his minions need to consider the fact that all of the high-paying careers in the world (save for one) require performance standards either measured in time, quantity, or quality.

In many of these careers the mere entrance to the path is blocked by a performance standard, which must be scaled before proceeding. We're talking about the SAT to get into college, then the MCATs or LSATs to go on to become a doctor or lawyer, to name but three.

Then there're the Boards and the Bar!

It is just about certain that with any high-paying career path, life is a bowl of performance standards. Standards which must be met. But we're not just talking about academics, other careers such as the entertainment business or professional athletics are chock-full of standards. (Yes, even excreable Hip-Hop acts must sell CDs to pay the bills.)

"But what about the one career which you said didn't have any performance standards," you ask?

Ahh, that one's called "living off your inheritance" (or your Lotto earnings, or your book royalties, or whatever).

Kohn is one of these ubiquitous educational "experts" who propose all sorts of changes to be done with education--now that they're out of school and don't need it anymore! Just as you find non-scientists and non-engineers proposing "wonderful" ways to "improve" the math curriculum (such as getting rid of the Calculus track), you find people like Kohn proposing to get rid of standards, because he doesn't need to meet any.

The folks who propose a purely utilitarian education for our youngsters suffer from what we've called The James Bond Gadget Curriculum. Kohn can see that he doesn't need grades because he's out of school, the same way the Bond movie producers knew to give 007 a parachute while skiing: because they knew how the movie would turn out!

But isn't our job as educators to open doors for our youngsters, not look forwards with our perfect hindsight, wearing fashionable glasses just because it looks cool?

No, Alfie Kohn is not insane. But he is spoiled.