What DOES being well educated mean?

books:

	• What Does it Mean to Be Well Educated? And Other Essays on Standards, Grading, and Other Follies Alfie Kohn Beacon Press, 2004 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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What DOES being well educated mean?

Alfie Kohn shares his dislike of "big business", the NRA, and standardized testing with us, yet nowhere in this book is a clear statement of what he envisions as a suitable approach of imparting learning and then measuring the student's learning.

The title should have been reserved for a well researched book on being well educated. While I share his jaundiced view of training to a test and the application of merit pay, he leaves me in the dark on what things students must be proficient in to be judged "well educated". The possibility of convincing politicians to sign on to an approach that seems to lack measurable standards is low, so why not use THIS book to show how another way could result in students being able to function well in our society and economy?

If you want a book for your coffee table, one that won't be read, this is it. The author is suitably "leftist" and throws in cliche factoids, but I have no better idea of what could replace traditional schools than when I opened his book.

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Excellent book!

If you are truly interested in what can be done to improve our schools, and tired of the rhetoric fed to you by politicians and the media, this book will definitely give you some meat to chew on and think about. I recommend it for all who believe in the value of education.

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Good but...

Alfie Kohn always does a good job of bringing a lot of enthusiasm and emotion to books like this. He definitely has a lot of good points, and at least attempts to make reference to studies. You will find yourself agreeing with a lot of the little observations he makes and many of his big ideas. However, as many have pointed out, a book like this tends to end up sounding like a collection of complaints more than a systematic discussion of what it actually means to be well-educated. I have implemented a number of his ideas in my own classroom with good success. The problem is that while he is clear about what shouldn't happen in a classroom, his discussion of what should happen always tends to be a little more open-ended and general. For example, he claims that students don't need to pack their heads with facts for a successful career, but rather need to be enthusiastic problem solvers and thinkers. So he suggests teachers shouldn't focus as much on rote memorization and factual knowledge. What is lacking is an in-depth discussion of how to foster thinking skills and problem solving in a classroom and maintain some sort of expectations of what kids should and will know or be able to do. This is the kind of book that makes for good, light reading about education and that can get you thinking. It is not the kind of book that should be widely quoted in serious research papers.

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reviews: page 1, 2

Few writers ask us to question our fundamental assumptions about education as provocatively as Alfie Kohn. Time magazine has called him "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores." And the Washington Post says he is "the most energetic and charismatic figure standing in the way of a major federal effort to make standardized curriculums and tests a fact of life in every U.S. school."

In this new collection of essays, Kohn takes on some of the most important and controversial topics in education of the last few years. His central focus is on the real goals of education?a topic, he argues, that we systematically ignore while lavishing attention on misguided models of learning and counterproductive techniques of motivation.

The shift to talking about goals yields radical conclusions and wonderfully pungent essays that only Alfie Kohn could have written. From the title essay's challenge to conventional, conservative definitions of a good education to essays on standards and testing and grades that tally the severe educational costs of overemphasizing a narrow conception of achievement, Kohn boldly builds on his earlier work and writes for a wide audience.

Kohn's new book will be greeted with enthusiasm by his many readers and by any teacher or parent looking for a refreshing perspective on today's debates about schools.

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