Vol. 5, No. 9: February 28, 2000

California legislators, educators, and parents should prepare to counter some wrong-headed advice which is coming to the Golden State.

A former teacher and author named Alfie Kohn is touring the nation telling anyone who will listen that high standards and performance rankings are evil, and that rewarding schools, teachers, and students that succeed will set back the cause of education. Kohn is currently organizing boycotts of high standards in 37 states.

It is as though golfer Tiger Woods were to discourage the use of score cards, or decathlete Rafer Johnson were to counsel athletes to never time themselves, maintain a strict diet of donuts, and always aim below the bar in the high jump, perhaps while shouting the slogan, "slower, lower, shorter." Or imagine Winton Marsalis enouraging music students not to practice scales and refuse to learn harmony, but then to demanding a recording contract.

The true parallel would be someone endorsing crack to the nation’s children, but Kohn is much more dangerous because he diguises the narcotic of failure in psychobabble and educationspeak. He bills himself a "progressive," but he’s really a vintage establishment man and reactionary who exemplifies Jean Cocteau’s dictum that the trouble with the modern age is that stupidity has begun to think.

Kohn’s ideas are exactly the sort of mainstream junkthought that has dominated American education since the sixties. It is a vision that holds a grudge against facts, knowledge, discipline, and hard work— for which there is simply no substitute—and is therefore incapable of cultivating excellence. This vision now seeks to make students "feel good about themselves," regardless of achievement.

That’s what it’s all about with Alfie, and that Kohn is taken seriously by anyone shows that the culture of institutionalized failure runs deep. It comes as no surprise that education administrators, our most absorbent layer of bureaucratic sediment, are his most eager acolytes, but some parent groups are also giving him a hearing. It has dawned on them that, whatever upbeat bumper stickers they might have on their mini-vans, if Timmy doesn’t do the work and pass the tests, he won’t advance to the next grade and might not get a diploma. Kohn wants them to blame the tests and the whole concept of high standards. But he did draw a negative response after a recent appearance in Wisconsin, a state much more serious about reform than California.

"It is unconscionable to stand before the students of this state and tell them they don’t need to be tested, don’t need to meet standards of excellence," said Governor Tommy Thompson. "We owe them that, because life will not get any easier for them once they leave our schools." This response, though courageous and on target, is much more thoughtful than Alfie Kohn and his backers in the education establishment deserve.

That which is ridiculous deserves to be ridiculed. The ideas advanced by this evangelist of obscurantism are not only stupid but destructive. To tell students that all will be well even if they fail to work hard and achieve is a massive form of child abuse. Any legislator, educator, parent, or student who shows up at Mr. Kohn’s March 5 event in San Francisco and tells him that will be rendering a service to the nation’s children.

— Lloyd Billingsley