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Kohn's ZoneChallenging the Conventional Wisdom About Education and Kids Author: Alfie Kohn
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 Kohns 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 conversations with leading experts in education. Watch this space for new episodes, which will appear as if by magic every two weeks or so. You can listen here, or, better yet, on the podcasts home, AlfieKohn.org/podcasts, which offers other resources. And to support us, please visit https://coff.ee/kohnszone. PRODUCTION SUPPORT: Ultraviolet Audio. ART: Abi Kohn. Language: en-us Genres: Kids & Family, Parenting, Science, Social Sciences Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Skip the Sugarcoating
Tuesday, 15 July, 2025
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, used 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 has 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
