I'm not, generally speaking, a fan of Alfie Kohn. If you're not an educator, then you likely haven't heard of him. If you are an educator, then you likely have heard of him and have an opinion one way or the other. The thing about his work that bothers me is he feels more like a contrarian polemicist than a committed educator, as if stirring the pot on education is his purpose, rather than improving the way our students learn and our teachers instruct. Still, he has some valid points, even if his conclusion wanders away from what I'm interested in. I don't care so much about the "ranking" of students, as he posits in this article , as I am in the concept of grades. His first four or five paragraphs are more interesting and worthwhile (it would impact all students, rather than the higher echelon of aggressively academic kids) but he quickly pivots into a lengthy rumination on valedictorians and other types of ranks. Since Kohn doesn't want to approac...
Personal musings of Steven Dowdle