Alfie Kohn

"If by American democracy we mean a pluralistic, multiracial society of political and social equals, then American democracy as we know it began with the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965...It’s this America that Trump and his supporters are] fighting to destroy with their attacks on […]

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Subjectivity is inevitable in human activity - and, by the way, not objectionable in itself. The problem is with disingenuous attempts to circumvent or hide those judgments.

In the case of college entrance exams, SAT or ACT scores not only aren't objective but are lousy markers for "merit," […]

Screenshot of pp. 4-5 of the book The Case Against Standardized Testing (https://www.alfiekohn.org/case-standardized-testing/)

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One more time: Quantified evaluations such as (machine-scored) standardized exams are no more "objective" or value-free than are narrative reports or other qualitative appraisals. Neither are rubrics. Their numbers just conceal the subjective judgments […]

[Original post on sciences.social]

Surveillance Company Flock Now Using Al to Report Us to Police if it Thinks Our Movement Patterns Are “Suspicious” Company crosses a dangerous line by beginning to offer Al suspicion-generation functions

Asked to generate intervention plans for struggling students, Al teacher assistants recommended more punitive measures for hypothetical students with Black-coded names and more supportive approaches for students the platforms perceived as white, a new study shows. These findings come from a report on the risks of bias in artificial intelligence tools published Wednesday by the non-profit Common Sense Media. Researchers specifically sought to evaluate the quality of Al teacher assistants — such as MagicSchool, Khanmingo, Curipod, and Google Gemini for Education — that are designed to support classroom planning, lesson differentiation, and administrative tasks.

Remember: You're not allowed to question the technology itself; Big Tech has already decided for us that it's our future. All we can do is remember - and remind students - that it's up to us to use AI "responsibly." […]

[Original post on sciences.social]

I guess purging inconvenient facts (about climate change, vaccines, the economy, immigration, racism, or whatever) creates a vacuum. So authoritarian regimes fill it with assertions that serve their interests. I fear we're going to see a lot more of this […]

Meme depicts Trump pointing at Hilary Clinton, then at Elizabeth Warren, then at Kamala Harris and saying "NASTY WOMAN" in response to each; and then, referring to convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell: "I wish her well!"

Studying science fairs: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/are-science-fairs-worth-all-that-trouble-study-seeks-some-answers/2017/11. Depressingly, most really aren't "fairs" at all but contests; the point is to triumph over other budding scientists. Discovery is framed as just a means to […]

https://www.colincornaby.me/2025/08/in-the-future-all-food-will-be-cooked-in-a-microwave-and-if-you-cant-deal-with-that-then-you-need-to-get-out-of-the-kitchen/

Those who say "Without tests, we wouldn't know how kids [or teachers] are doing" just reveal their ignorance about alternative assessments. But such statements should prompt all of us to ask if we, too, sometimes make a statement ("X is necessary") instead of asking a question ("Are there […]

FOX [News interviewer]: Will Israel take control of all of Gaza? NETANYAHU: We intend to

How do you say "Lebensraum" in Hebrew?

[From post by Aaron Rupar] REPORTER: Do you support a federal takeover of Washington DC as the president suggested? [U.S. attorney] PIRRO: That is a decision for the president ... young people are coddled. And they don't need to be coddled anymore. They need to be held accountable.

Note that claims about how "young people are coddled" (which I debunked at book length: https://www.alfiekohn.org/myth-spoiled-child/) help to support an authoritarian political agenda.

President Trump and Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, announced on Wednesday that Apple would devote $100 billion to additional investment in the United States, the company’s latest move to buy more components from U.S. suppliers and avoid the president’s threat of tariffs on iPhones. The announcement, in the gold-adorned Oval Office, came after Mr. Cook presented Mr. Trump with a 24-karat gold gift and lavished him with praise...

Despots attain (and retain) power by forming corrupt alliances with plutocrats using threats and bribes. The latter shamelessly suck up to the former in the hope of avoiding their wrath, on the one hand, and making a fortune, on the other. It's one thing to […]

[Original post on sciences.social]

The pop-behaviorist canard that refuses to die is that an extrinsic inducement just provides a helpful jump-start: Once you experience the intrinsic value of reading, learning, helping, being physically fit, etc., the reward can be phased out.

Alas, the evidence, which I updated in 2018 ( […]

[WashPost headline] Amid hurricane season, FEMA staffers reassigned to support deportations

Sure, they signed up to assist with emergencies and are now being forced to *create* emergencies for people, but why nitpick?

There are people I'd work to convince that "merit" in college admissions is a complicated and often misleading concept, that tests & grades are discriminatory and predict only future tests & grades.
But the Trump regime doesn't care about any of this. Its goal - and reason for invoking the idea […]

When I interviewed British-born math educator Jo Boaler for my new podcast, I was tempted to ask her if U.S. teachers have trouble keeping up with their counterparts in the UK because over there they study "maths," whereas here we have just the one.
If you're curious about what I did ask her […]

Parents say they're pro-integration, but "in districts where they have more opportunity] to choose schools, [the] schools appear to become more segregated." Affluent white parents seem to judge school quality just based on the number of other affluent whites who attend: [ […]

An interviewer is pointing a microphone at a malnourished child on the ground and asking "But do you condemn Hamas?"

Image of the 2025 Men's Senior Club Championship released by the White House, about which Ron Filipkowski comments: "By my count that is now his 30th consecutive club championship"

Cartoon showing Trump using a Sharpie to revise a graph of the monthly job creation statistics

If you'd been following the (pathetic but harmless) instance of his ego-driven cheating on the left, then you weren't surprised by the (equally pathetic but potentially devastating) example on the right

Stovetop berry crisp: Ali’s highly versatile recipe is perfect to make in summer houses and cabins where you might not find a casserole dish in the cabinet, but you do have a skillet....

Even the food staff at the NY Times are determined to prove it's the "people's paper." Here's a recipe that thoughtfully takes into account the kitchen gear that readers are likely to have at their summer homes.

"We have a lot of evidence now that the best way to learn maths is conceptually, through big ideas, through making connections, [whereas] the approach of memorizing is associated with low achievement."
That's Jo Boaler of Stanford University, speaking on the latest episode ("Number Sense and […]

Logo for the podcast Kohn's Zone: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom About Education and Kids

Photo of Jo Boaler

A new episode of my podcast, Kohn's Zone, just dropped: "Number Sense and Nonsense" - a lively conversation with eminent math educator Jo Boaler about what's wrong with traditional math instruction and what should replace it […]

[Original post on sciences.social]

Post from Trita Parsi: My God Green Beret Anthony Agular recounts how a 5-year-old Palestinian kissed his hands to thank him for the food Agular gave him Seconds later, Israeli soldiers shot and killed the starving child ISIS prisoners were treated with more dignity than these children, Agular says. [screenshots of a video of this are included]

64.5% of the Israeli public is not at all or not very concerned about the humanitarian situation on the Gaza Strip.

Around two-thirds of the public think that when planning military operations, Israel should not take into account, or should only take into account to a small extent, the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza...

When you see news stories day after day about Israel's deliberate policy of creating mass starvation and shooting desperate civilians, please realize this can't be blamed exclusively on a handful of monsters in charge.

(Sources for the figures below […]

[Original post on sciences.social]

Most of us realize that selfish people pay a price in relationship quality and general well-being but assume they make more money. Now a cluster of studies with large databases shows that's not true, even after controlling for gender, age, and ethnicity […]

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...including the purest expression of elitism I've ever heard: "The reason folks songs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people."
Or his mention of a doctor he knows who specializes in diseases of the rich.

I met Lehrer in the '70s & asked him why he hadn't written any songs […]

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Maybe your childhood inspiration was a movie star or an athlete. Mine was #Tom_Lehrer (1928-2025). I tracked down & studied the sheet music to his songs, memorized all of them (including "The Elements"), and started writing & performing my own satiric ditties.
Lehrer could have done standup […]

School superintendent to Governor: Please make my school a prison A school superintendent asked his state to provide for his students the same way it provides for prisoners.

I still think about this letter that a superintendent wrote to his Republican governor, asking that his school be turned into a prison so that it might have a chance of being funded adequately: https://bigthink.com/guest-thinkers/school-superintendent-to-governor-please-make-my-school-a-prison/

He's entitled to do whatever he chooses to any woman (or girl) he finds attractive in the same way that he's entitled to turn the DOJ into his private law firm (to attack his enemies) or to use ICE or the National Guard as his private militia. Every news story points to his malignant narcissism.

Bluesky post from Tori Foote features this comment by right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk: "Everything you are witnessing is a plan to destabilize, destroy, and transition the America you grew up in." To which another poster replies, "| grew up in an America where a woman could not get a credit card, marital rape was not only legal but considered impossible, gay sex was punishable by hard prison time, possessing marijana could get you life in prison, black men were still being lynched, young men were being drafted and sent off to die. And am only in my early 60s. Your romanticizing the past is self-service bullshit."

Nostalgia (which, as Adrienne Rich pointed out, is adjacent to amnesia) doesn't always signify fascism, but fascism always depends on nostalgia.

It's telling that, when the WSJ published Trump's lewd cartoon (that he'd sent to his sex-trafficking pal), some MAGA folks (who were upset with Trump not for what he did to underage girls but for failing to release evidence of a supposed conspiracy) are on his side again. Their hatred of the […]