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PODCAST

Kohn"s Zone

Over more than a third of a century, Alfie Kohn has offered a multifaceted defense of progressive education as well as research-based critiques of rewards and punishments, grades, standardized testing, homework, competition, and other aspects of traditional schooling (and parenting). Each episode of Kohn’s Zone will offer 20-30 minutes of provocative reflections on a topic having to do with teaching and learning — or with human behavior more generally; occasional longer segments will feature

science social sciences

All Episodes

26:34

Who Gets to Decide – Part 2

Kohn"s Zone ·

2026/01/01

January 1, 2026Who Gets to Decide? - Part 2 Intellectually vibrant classrooms are distinguished by teachers who do a lot more asking than telling. Their motto when confronting challenges or planning lessons is "Bring the kids in on it!" Regular class meetings offer a significant role for students to reflect on "how we want our class to be" (rather than focusing on specific rules). This second of a two-part episode digs deeply into strategies for supporting student autonomy and then explores some

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20:45

Who Gets to Decide?

Kohn"s Zone ·

2025/12/15

December 15, 2025Who Gets to Decide? An impressive body of research shows that people of all ages - including students in classrooms - are happier, healthier, and more productive when they have some say about what they're doing. Indeed, the way children learn to make good decisions is by making decisions. Why, then, are so many classrooms more focused on eliciting their compliance than supporting their autonomy? In this, the first of a two-part episode, stories and studies illustrate the benefits

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1:08:02

The Curious Case of the Incurious Children

Kohn"s Zone ·

2025/12/01

December 1, 2025 The Curious Case of the Incurious Children A Conversation with Susan Engel Everyone agrees that it's good to be curious, but that doesn't mean schools are committed to fostering children's curiosity. This extended episode of Kohn's Zone features a provocative conversation with early-childhood expert Susan Engel of Williams College, who draws on a deep background of theory and research (some of it her own) to probe the nature of curiosity -- that remarkable desire we have to resolve

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34:04

It’s Not Just You

Kohn"s Zone ·

2025/11/15

November 15, 2025It's Not Just You The most popular initiatives in education tend to be strategies for "fixing the kids." A focus on the deficits of individual students, rather than a critical analysis of systemic issues, is the common denominator of academic remediation, behavior management programs, and efforts to equip children with more self-regulation, grit, or a "growth mindset." Yet the entire field of social psychology warns us that we err in underestimating the impact of the environments

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46:58

Making Kids Work a Second Shift

Kohn"s Zone ·

2025/11/01

November 1, 2025Making Kids Work a Second Shift Too often the debate over homework is restricted to its quantity -- or, at best, its quality. But such discussions take for granted the need for some homework, as if it were impossible to question that premise. It may come as a surprise, therefore, to learn that research generally fails to support the value of, let alone the need for, requiring children to complete more academic tasks when they get home from school. (For elementary and middle school

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27:42

A.I., as in Anti-Intellectual

Kohn"s Zone ·

2025/10/15

October 15, 2025A.I., as in Anti-Intellectual People who express concern about the use of AI in schools often focus on how it allows students to get away with something (by using OpenAI to write their essays). But shouldn't we be talking more about its potential effects on teaching and learning than whether it will impede our ability to evaluate students? The problem is not just that we seem to be overestimating the capabilities of LLMs but that we seem to be underestimating the essence of

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1:05:57

Death by Civics

Kohn"s Zone ·

2025/10/01

October 1, 2025Death 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 conventional civics courses with mind-numbing recitations of facts about how government is supposed to work. There's a big

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The Failure of Failure

Kohn"s Zone ·

2025/09/15

September 15, 2025The 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

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26:24

Bad Signs

Kohn"s Zone ·

2025/09/01

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

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24:56

Confusing Harder with Better

Kohn"s Zone ·

2025/08/15

August 15, 2025Confusing 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

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55:35

Number Sense and Nonsense

Kohn"s Zone ·

2025/08/01

August 1, 2025Number 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

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16:53

Skip the Sugarcoating

Kohn"s Zone ·

2025/07/15

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

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24:19

Little Ed Koches

Kohn"s Zone ·

2025/07/01

July 1, 2025Little 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 bar" may not realize that this focus on achievement makes kids think less about learning because, like a certain bald former mayor of New York

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21:18

The Back-to-School-Night Speech We’d Like to Hear...

Kohn"s Zone ·

2025/07/01

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

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