Kohn's Zone

October 1, 2025 Death by Civics A Conversation with Joel Westheimer About the Role of Education in Democratic Life   Suppose you wanted young people to develop a commitment to democracy, particularly at a time when it’s under assault. How would you do that? Not by creating a school culture in which following the rules is valued more than critical thinking. And not by offering convention...

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. Eit...

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 individual...

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 offe...

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...

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 th...

July 1, 2025 Little Ed Koches Grades and tests get in the way of learning for multiple reasons, but this episode digs deeper to explore how any practices that lead students to focus on how well they’re doing in school — as opposed to what they’re doing — are bad news. Policy makers who trumpet their demands for higher standards, “rigor,” and “raising the b...

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 pre...