Kohn's Zone

September 15, 2025 The Failure of Failure The notion that kids today have it too easy and would benefit from more experiences with failure is no longer a surprising, contrarian claim; it has become the conventional wisdom. But it’s dead wrong on two levels: Most children deal with frustration and failure quite a lot, and those experiences tend not to be beneficial, according to research. Either naïveté or conservative ideology leads many adults to believe that when students fall short, they’ll react by trying harder next time. But more commonly students are trapped in a vicious cycle such that they’re even more likely to fail again — and they’re also apt to lose interest in what they’re doing and to prefer easier tasks. Educators and parents would do well to realize that the supposed benefits of failure are vastly overrated. RESOURCES: Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and Ayelet Fishbach, “Not Learning from Failure – the Greatest Failure of All,” Psychological Science 30 (2019): 1733-44 Lauren Eskreis-Winkler et al., “The Exaggerated Benefits of Failure,” Journal of Experimental Psychology – General 153 (2024): 1920-37 Ann K. Boggiano et al., “Competing Theoretical Analyses of Helplessness,” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 55 (1993): 194-207   A note from Alfie Kohn: I made two decisions when I decided to start this podcast. The first was not to accept ads. The second was to avoid putting certain episodes behind a paywall (or offering special content only to those who pay). But this means that I depend on the generosity of everyone who listens to help cover the production costs. So: Can you afford a modest contribution — ideally on a regular basis, since a podcast, after all, is not a one-shot event? If so, I’d be grateful if you’d support the project with whatever amount seems fair to you. (Your generosity will also confirm the thesis of my book The Brighter Side of Human Nature.) Oh, and if you enjoy the podcast, please tell other people about it. Thanks! Please click the button below to donate. If you don’t see a button, please go to this page (https://coff.ee/kohnszone). Donate PRODUCTION SUPPORT: Ultraviolet Audio ART: Abi Kohn

September 1, 2025 Bad Signs The posters and signs adorning school walls speak volumes about the people who put them there, revealing a surprising amount about their views of children, their assumptions about learning, and even their beliefs about human nature. There’s the enforced positivity of slogans that basically tell students: “Have a nice day….or else,” the individualistic worldview of inspirational slogans with their messages of strenuous uplift, the chirpy banalities airily informing kids that structural barriers don’t exist: All they need is perseverance and a dream, so they have only themselves to blame if they fail to achieve greatness. Nothing preserves the current arrangements of power more than messages that ignore the current arrangements of power. To see this principle in action, just visit a school — particularly one in a low-income neighborhood — and read the writing on the walls. RESOURCES – Demotivators: https://despair.com/collections/posters – Barbara Ehrenreich: Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America (Metropolitan, 2009) (https://tinyurl.com/yr9vew3u)   A note from Alfie Kohn: I made two decisions when I decided to start this podcast. The first was not to accept ads. The second was to avoid putting certain episodes behind a paywall (or offering special content only to those who pay). But this means that I depend on the generosity of everyone who listens to help cover the production costs. So: Can you afford a modest contribution — ideally on a regular basis, since a podcast, after all, is not a one-shot event? If so, I’d be grateful if you’d support the project with whatever amount seems fair to you. (Your generosity will also confirm the thesis of my book The Brighter Side of Human Nature.) Oh, and if you enjoy the podcast, please tell other people about it. Thanks! Please click the button below to donate. If you don’t see a button, please go to this page (https://coff.ee/kohnszone). Donate PRODUCTION SUPPORT: Ultraviolet Audio ART: Abi Kohn

August 15, 2025 Confusing Harder with Better What do the following have in common? a) parents who don’t seem particularly concerned about whether what their kids are doing in school is engaging or meaningful, but are quick to complain if their assignments aren’t sufficiently challenging b) people who assume that Advanced Placement classes must be the best that a high school has to offer just because these classes are really tough c) proponents of school reform who use the language of “rigor” and “raising the bar” d) legislators and administrators who require students to take standardized tests that many successful adults would struggle to pass The common denominator here is the deep-rooted assumption that, where schooling is concerned, higher quality is basically equivalent to greater difficulty. This episode of Kohn’s Zone explores how profoundly this misconception has shaped our understanding of schooling.   A note from Alfie Kohn: If you’ve been enjoying, or at least listening to, the podcast but have put off doing your part to support it, I am pleased to inform you that it is not too late to do so. It will also not be too late tomorrow, but doing so today would be even better. Microphones, as my father might have said, do not grow on trees.  Please consider a modest contribution — ideally on a regular basis, since a podcast, after all, is not a one-shot event — to keep us ad-free and unpaywalled.  Thanks! Please click the button below to donate. If you don’t see a button, please go to this page (https://coff.ee/kohnszone). Donate PRODUCTION SUPPORT: Ultraviolet Audio ART: Abi Kohn

August 1, 2025 Number Sense and Nonsense A Conversation with Jo Boaler About Learning Math(s)   Question: Why do so many people write off math as uninteresting if not downright unpleasant, and as something they just don’t have a knack for? Answer: Years of traditional instruction with textbooks and worksheets and quizzes, memorization of math facts and algorithms, direct instruction of the approved technique for arriving at the right answer (followed by endless practice problems) that leaves you with no understanding of what you’re doing, let alone why. This extended episode of Kohn’s Zone features a spirited conversation with math educator Jo Boaler of Stanford University, who explains how we’re trapped by mistaken beliefs about how math should be taught – and what math is. RESOURCES: YouCubed.org — Boaler’s center for innovative math teaching Books by Boaler: Math-ish, Mathematical Mindsets, What’s Math Got to Do With It? A chapter by Kohn (from The Schools Our Children Deserve): “What Works Better than Traditional Math Instruction” (https://tinyurl.com/54mzvu69)   A note from Alfie Kohn: I made two decisions when I decided to start this podcast. The first was not to accept ads. The second was to avoid putting certain episodes behind a paywall (or offering special content only to those who pay). But this means that I depend on the generosity of everyone who listens to help cover the production costs. So: Can you afford a modest contribution — ideally on a regular basis, since a podcast, after all, is not a one-shot event? If so, I’d be grateful if you’d support the project with whatever amount seems fair to you. (Your generosity will also confirm the thesis of my book The Brighter Side of Human Nature.) Oh, and if you enjoy the podcast, please tell other people about it. Thanks!   Please click the button below to donate. If you don’t see a button, please go to this page (https://coff.ee/kohnszone). Donate PRODUCTION SUPPORT: Ultraviolet Audio ART: Abi Kohn

July 15, 2025 Skip the Sugarcoating If your company is offering unappealing food, you’ll be tempted to add artificial sweetener. And if your schools are offering unengaging lessons (which students had no role in creating), you’ll be tempted to use some kind of gimmick to make them seem less dreary. This episode considers how, long before “gamification,” John Dewey hit on the metaphor of sugarcoating to describe efforts to distract kids from the “barrenness” of what they were being made to do. Half a century later, give or take, a pair of early-childhood educators, Rheta DeVries and Betty Zan, hit on the same metaphor to explain how the use of rewards, including the verbal kind (“Good job!”), are mostly efforts to sugarcoat control. (If this podcast accepted ads, which it assuredly does not, you would expect one to run in this episode for a certain cereal mentioned by name that is tasty enough to require no artificial sweetening.)   A note from Alfie Kohn: If you’re already signed up to receive an email when a new blog post appears on my website, the software gods have decreed that you’ll also get a notification as soon as each new episode of the podcast becomes available.  (If you want to opt out of that, you should be able to do so on the sign-up page.) If you’re enjoying Kohn’s Zone, please let folks in your professional and personal circles know about it by forwarding a link to the page where it lives. And if you can afford a modest contribution — ideally on a regular basis, since a podcast, after all, is not a one-shot event — please consider supporting the project with whatever amount seems fair to you in order to keep it ad-free and make sure all content is freely available to everyone. Thanks!   Please click the button below to donate. If you don’t see a button, please go to this page (https://coff.ee/kohnszone). Donate PRODUCTION SUPPORT: Ultraviolet Audio ART: Abi Kohn

The discussion dives into the detrimental effects of focusing on grades and tests in education. It argues that an obsession with achievement can stifle genuine learning and critical thinking. Using Ed Koch as a case study, the hosts critique standardized testing and advocate for prioritizing meaningful inquiry instead. They highlight six significant drawbacks to performance emphasis, urging a shift towards nurturing curiosity and a passion for learning in students. Ultimately, it’s a call for educational reform to foster a more enriching learning environment.

July 1, 2025 The Back-to-School-Night Speech We’d Like to Hear This introductory episode offers an overview of education issues that will be discussed on the podcast — a sort of a Cliff’s Notes to what distinguishes traditional from progressive education. It takes the form of a (fictitious) principal’s remarks to parents delivered one evening in a school auditorium. The premise was inspired by a movie-satire feature that occasionally appeared in Mad magazine called “Scenes We’d Like to See.” It was also inspired (or, um, counterinspired) by some back-to-school talks we’ve actually heard.   A note from Alfie Kohn: I made two decisions when I decided to start this podcast. The first was not to accept ads. The second was to avoid putting certain episodes behind a paywall (or offering special content only to those who pay). But this means that I depend on the generosity of everyone who listens to help cover the production costs. So: Can you afford a modest contribution — ideally on a regular basis, since a podcast, after all, is not a one-shot event? If so, I’d be grateful if you’d support the project with whatever amount seems fair to you. (Your generosity will also confirm the thesis of my book The Brighter Side of Human Nature.) Oh, and if you enjoy the podcast, please tell other people about it. Thanks!   Please click the button below to donate. If you don’t see a button, please go to this page (https://coff.ee/kohnszone). Donate PRODUCTION SUPPORT: Ultraviolet Audio ART: Abi Kohn