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Questions and Response After Alfie Kohn's
Keynote Address
Mark Jacobs, Longview School and
Homeschooling Center, New York, U.S.A.:
I have to say I think you’re a wonderful
speaker, and the things that you introduced at
the beginning about our movement coming together
and not being the alternative really struck a
chord in me.
Then, I’m worried that a lot of what you said
did the opposite of that. I’ll tell you where
I’m coming from. I help run a Sudbury school. A
lot of what you said almost sounded like it was
an attack on the freedom that is allowed at a
Sudbury type school environment. I hope it
isn’t. I hope your middle is big enough to
include the folks who believe in a lot of
freedom but not absolute and total freedom,
which is certainly not what we believe in.
I want to point to just a few things that you
said. For example, the Mayflower example. I
think that’s a wonderful example within a
certain range of that middle of good teaching. I
don’t think that fits into what we do at a
Sudbury school. That doesn’t make me critical of
it, I think it’s great for a whole range of
schools. But it is not necessary. I think the
sort of learning that is done there can be done
by students confronting the problems. When they
have lots of time to pursue their interests and
projects they will confront similar problems,
and they will pursue it to great depth without
the contrivance of adults in that process. Not
that what you describe is bad, it’s great. But
it’s also great to let them do it themselves,
and there should be room for both – both in
intellectual learning and emotional learning.
Kids come up with really bad consequences, this
is the second situation, certainly they do. But
given time and structure where they are making
real decisions, they’ll come up with great
consequences. They’re not always good, but when
they’re bad they learn that they’re bad and they
don’t make that mistake again and again. Again,
without much adult intervention.
So I think your way of describing it is
wonderful for a range of that middle, but I hope
that your middle is big enough to include those
of us who believe in a heckuva lot more freedom
than you talked about here tonight.
Alfie Kohn: I appreciate the
challenge. And I certainly understand your
pointing to what may have seemed like a
discontinuity between my original remarks
looking for shared values, what we have in
common, and what followed that. I think you’re
right. And while I think that it’s nice to bring
together people who oppose certain oppressive
aspects of the educational status quo, your
comment usefully pushed me to recognize that
that’s not my primary goal. If that happens,
that we can find aspects of common denominators,
that’s terrific. I think, for example, we can
make common cause even with people who wouldn’t
be caught dead in a room with us, on some
issues. There are people in Utah fighting the
Many Child Left Behind Act for very different
reasons than I have for fighting it. And so it
is the case here for us.
But my primary objective isn’t to find positions
on which we all agree.
Rather, I’m concerned to ask what makes sense as
over-arching principles for kids, keeping in
mind that different kids are going to prefer
different styles, as do different families. And
I’m willing to let those chips fall where they
may.
If what I have described to you, which I think
is optimal, includes what you are doing,
terrific. If it doesn’t, I’m not going to
retreat from that because it doesn’t include
you, just as I would expect that your vision
might be different. And then if we say this is
good, but that’s good too, then we have to be
more precise about what we mean. Do we mean good
for different kids? Are there some kids for
which you’re saying The Mayflower doesn’t work?
Is it the case that this vision works for all
kids? I think we need to ask those questions
very carefully.
I don’t start out with the goal of excluding
anyone from this model. I do start with a
deliberate and only half-mischievous intent to
provoke all of us, including me, to rethink our
points of departure, our axiomatic beginnings,
and to ask questions not just around the edges
of our techniques, but at the very core of what
assumptions we’re making about our roles. And I
thank you for the challenge.
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