Alfie Kohn

I just watched a few videos from author Alfie Kohn.  He has some radical ideas about education.  He doesn't believe there should be grades, rewards, or homework.  He has a ton of research to back up everything he says.  I truly believe that if you take away grades, rewards, and homework, you will lose a lot of the children.  He says that students will be intrinsically motivated to learn, that they will want to learn for the love of learning.  He also says that they are learning to get the reward, not to do the actual activity. 

I think instead of taking these things away, we learn how to use them in different ways.  As a society, we are motivated by love of money.  You go to school to try to get a better job, in order to make more money.  You want to make enough money to support a family of your own, buy a home, and buy a car.  You get a promotion at work based on your current performance and that promotion is tied to more responsibility and more money.  We get periodic peer reviews based on our work performance that tells us areas we need to improve upon.  People even take work home with them nowadays.  These are just adult examples of grades, rewards, and homework.

Money is a reward.  The promotion is an advancement based on your grade from your peer reviews.  And taking work home with you is your homework.

I really believe in his radical ideas, I just don't think that we will ever experience a nationwide abolishment of grades, rewards, and homework.