Another style of educator
Ryan Tubongbanua / The Collegian
Kohn, who has written 10 books on education, parenting and human behavior, came to the Satellite Student Union to discuss the topics. |
By Katrina Garcia
The Collegian
Alfie Kohn is not afraid to take his own advice when it comes to lecturing and learning.
Kohn, a guest speaker at the University Lecture Series Tuesday night, stressed the importance of conversations between students at all grade levels. Ten minutes into his lecture, Kohn asked the audience to turn to a stranger and discuss a key point he had just made.
Kohn, who spoke to a full house in the Satellite Student Union, endorsed a different Michigan classroom approach, where a teacher focused on students learning how to obtain the right answers rather than gazing at them until they find the correct ones.
Kohn said the traditional, conventional teaching method focuses on students fishing for the “right answers.” In this environment, Kohn said thinking is discouraged and this “right-answer approach” is detrimental to a child’s thought process.
Thinking becomes difficult for students to do in this “anti-intellectual environment,” and Kohn said students begin to behave “like you would train a pet to engage in a series of behaviors.”
Kohn insists that teachers should begin with the concept of the lesson, not just the facts themselves.
“In a great classroom,” Kohn said, “right answers aren’t the be-all, end-all. Skills and facts don’t go far enough when they become the whole point.”
Kohn has written 10 books on education.
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