Articles+-+Daniel+Willingham+vs+Alfie+Kohn

= Daniel Willingham vs. Alfie Kohn =

Below is a dialogue between Daniel Willingham and Alfie Kohn that occured on the Britannica Blog. The dialogue between the two voices in education provide an interesting contrast between two different perspectives on education:

= Daniel Willingham: =

[|Alfie Kohn Is Bad for You and Dangerous For Your Children]
[|Daniel Willingham] - February 2nd, 2009

[|Alfie Kohn] has been a leading voice in education for better than two decades. The author of 11 books and numerous articles in high-profile outlets, he is an influential go-to guy for education reporters seeking expert comments on everything from [|standardized testing policy] to [|student motivation].

Let me admit at the outset that I don’t really believe reading what he has to say is bad for you. But if Kohn were writing about his own work, that would probably be his takeaway message. Kohn has made a virtual industry out of finding interesting and provocative insights in the psychological literature and following them off the edge of a cliff.

It’s worth reading Kohn simply because others do, and he is helpful as a pointer to interesting psychological literatures that have been ignored. I say “pointer to” rather than “interpreter of” because his summaries of these interesting literatures are usually incomplete and misleading. For that reason, I think of Kohn as the honeyguide of education. The [|honeyguide]is a bird that leads humans to bee colonies. Once the human has opened the hive and taken the honey, the bird feeds on the wax and larvae that remain behind. So it is with Kohn. He will lead you to something interesting and useful, but if you want to use it, you will have to do the work yourself.

I have not read all of Kohn’s sizable body of writing, but I have read pieces on three of his major themes from the last decade:
 * the role of homework in schooling,
 * the role of praise and reward in motivation, and most recently,
 * the role of self-discipline in academic achievement.

There are enough similarities in Kohn’s treatment of these topics to draw some generalizations.

Kohn specializes in attacking conventional wisdom in education. He takes a common practice that people think is helpful and then shows it’s not helpful, and in fact is destructive. Most people think that homework helps kids learn, praise shows appreciation and makes them more likely to do desirable things, and self-discipline helps them achieve their goals. Kohn argues that each of these conclusions is wrong or over-simplified. Homework may bring small benefits to some students, but it incurs greater costs and overall is likely not worth assigning. Praise doesn’t help academic achievement, it controls children, it reduces motivation, and makes them less able to make decisions. Self-discipline is oversold as an educational panacea, and in some contexts may actually be undesirable.

Kohn consistently makes factual errors, oversimplifies the literature that he seeks to explain, and commits logical fallacies.

For example, in [|this 2006 Education Week piece], Kohn questions the value of homework. He claims that the data showing that homework boosts academic achievement in elementary school are soft and brushes aside data showing that it boosts academic achievement in high school, saying that “more sophisticated statistical controls” show that it doesn’t help at all. This summary does not correspond with the conclusions of most researchers, (see, for example, this[| review of the homework literature]). Kohn also argues that two common justifications for homework—to automatize skills and to provide practice time for mastery—are based on flawed assumptions. Kohn claims that time on task is not important to learning, and that the only skills that can be automatized are behavioral, that is, physical responses such as a golf swing. On both points, he’s in error. (Once could cite many examples: two would be the chapter on automaticity in pilots’ perception by [|Mica Endsley], and the chapter on practice time by [|Anders Ericsson], both in the [|Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance].

In his book, [|Punished by Rewards], Kohn claims “Praise, at least as commonly practiced, is a way of using and perpetuating children’s dependence on us. It gets them to conform to our wishes irrespective of what those wishes are.” (p. 104.) Kohn also argues that praise and rewards for good behavior are destructive to motivation. The truth is actually somewhat more complicated. Rewards can reduce motivation, but only when motivation was somewhat high to start with. If the student is unmotivated to perform some task, rewarding him will not hurt his motivation. Praise can be controlling and exact a psychological cost, but its effect on the recipient depends on how it’s construed: does the child think you are offering sincere appreciation for a job well done, or sending the message that future behavior had better be in line with expectations? There is important psychological work showing that the role of praise and reward is complex. [|Carol Dweck] is a leader in this field and her book, [|Mindset], provides a good overview.

In a recent piece in the [|Phi Delta Kappan], Kohn argues that self-discipline has been over-sold, and indeed, that it has a dark side—too much self-control may be associated with anxiety, compulsiveness, and dampened emotional responses. He notes that some researchers put few or no qualifications on their enthusiasm for self-control, essentially arguing that more is always better. But Kohn proceeds from a definition of “self-control” that differs from that used by these researchers ([|Roy Baumeister], [|Angela Duckworth], [|Walter Mischel], and [|Marty Seligman]), and indeed, by virtually all of the important researchers in the field. They define self-control as the ability to marshal your cognitive and emotional resources to help you attain goals that you consider important. Kohn defines self-control as using willpower to accomplish things that are generally regarded as desirable. Thus by Kohn’s definition, a child shows self-discipline when she determinedly (and miserably) slogs towards a goal that she does not value, but that her parents (or others) deem important. Researchers use the former definition when they claim that they find no disadvantages to self-control, and that they observe positive associations with achievement, social adjustment, mental health. Kohn’s point—that authoritarian control leads to negative outcomes—is not very startling and is shared more or less universally by researchers.

Kohn falls prey to logical fallacies on occasion. In the same Kappan piece on self-discipline, Kohn writes “Learning, after all, depends not on what students do so much as on how they regard and construe what they do. To assume otherwise is to revert to a crude behaviorism long since repudiated by serious scholars.” (p. 170). This is a [|false dilemma]. Kohn offers me the choice of agreeing with his version of a constructivist learning theory or agreeing with a behaviorist theory. Actually, those are not my only choices of learning theories. (I have yet to find a Kohn piece in which behaviorism—a theory whose heyday was fifty years ago, and is now ignored by most learning theorists—did not take a beating.)

Kohn’s work often makes use of [|misleading vividness], or perhaps better, a variant of that fallacy. His articles are characterized by a long, vehement attack on the target and a brief, subdued qualification of the attack. The pale qualification, though important to an accurate characterization of the literature, is likely forgotten by the reader. For example, the Kappan piece is an attack on three fronts (psychological, philosophical, and political) on the usefulness of self-discipline. Kohn also notes “While I readily admit that persevering at worthwhile tasks is good—and that some students seem to lack this capacity—. . . .” This qualification indicates that an important topic ought to be “when is self-control useful, and when is it destructive?” But the message of the article is unqualified: self-discipline is bad.

Kohn is not bad for you nor dangerous to your children. Indeed, he’s helpful to the field as a provacteur. In each case, the literature he cites (and mischaracterizes) invites important questions for educators. Homework is associated with achievement, but what are the drawbacks? Can we achieve those gains some other way? What are the most effective types of homework? Do we praise too much? How can we know what is the right type of praise, and when to use it? How can we encourage children to be self-disciplined, and at the same time guard against children completely forfeiting their goals in favor of the goals of teachers, parents and coaches? Kohn’s work can help us to formulate these questions, but should not be read as a guide to the answers because it cannot be trusted as an accurate summary of the research literature. [Editor’s Note: See also, [|**Alfie Kohn’s Reply to Daniel Willingham**]]

* * *

Dan Willingham, author of [|Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for Your Classroom], typically posts on the first and third Mondays of each month.

= Alfie Kohn: =

[|Alfie Kohn’s Reply to Daniel Willingham]
February 5th, 2009

Educational writer and speaker [|ALFIE KOHN] (right) here responds to criticisms of his work by Britannica blogger [|Daniel Willingham].

* * *

Responding to an [|attack] of this kind is a dicey proposition, so when this website’s administrator called it to my attention, I was frankly ambivalent about offering a reply. When one is patronizingly dismissed as no more than a provocateur – worth reading only because the questions he raises are interesting, or just to see what all the fuss is about – how is he to defend himself without seeming defensive? Is it possible to make a case for the value of one’s own writings without lapsing into self-congratulation? Or to defend one’s intellectual integrity without appearing to give credence to the baseless charge that there are meaningful doubts about it?

I finally decided to weigh in for two reasons. First, these accusations shouldn’t go unanswered lest even a single reader infer from my silence that they have merit. Second, Mr. Willingham does endeavor to make some substantive points — unlike the rabble that greeted his attack with glee, eager to find and publicize something – anything – unpleasant about me. (I speak here of the kind of people who traffic not in reasoned discourse but in name-calling, apparently so infuriated by what I write that they’re reduced to accusing me of just trying to make a buck – or, worse, a lot of bucks [based on hilariously ill-informed speculation about how many lectures I give]. Those who respond to the work of an author whom they’ve never met by sneering at his or her imagined motives for writing have thereby revealed their inability to formulate a serious argument against that work.)

To his credit, Mr. Willingham does not stoop to this. Still, it’s more than a little irritating that he sets himself up not as someone who disagrees with my reading of the research but as a defender of Truth out to expose a writer who “cannot be trusted,” who “makes factual errors, oversimplifies the literature that he seeks to explain, and commits logical fallacies.” Let’s see whether he offers any real support for these grave accusations or instead provides an uncanny illustration of the very failings he attributes to me.

1. HOMEWORK: I’ve written [|a book on this subject] (right) that reviews the research pretty thoroughly (albeit for a general rather than academic readership) and includes a careful critique of the claims made by several researchers in the field, notably Harris Cooper. I try to show how Cooper’s conclusions are often at variance with his own data. Enter Mr. Willingham, who, having read only one of my short articles, is nonetheless ready to pronounce my summary of the homework research incorrect based on his belief that it “does not correspond with the conclusions of most researchers.” He then offers a single citation: a press release featuring comments by. . . Harris Cooper.

Even if it were true that “most researchers” take a certain position, saying so is not tantamount to offering a substantive defense of that position. In any case, no evidence is offered to support this claim. Mr. Willingham’s failure to respond to the questions I raise about the very individual on whom he relies to challenge my position, meanwhile, reminds us of the perils of attacking an author’s work on a subject without bothering to read his book.

I’m faulted for two specific arguments related to homework. First, I offer evidence that the relation between time-on-task and performance is not linear and is weakest when the measure of performance has more to do with understanding than with the acquisition of superficial skills. I would be interested to learn what evidence, if any, Mr. Willingham has found to the contrary. Second, I point out the limits of repetitive practice, drawing from a large literature dealing with the construction of knowledge. In a style emblematic of his entire post, Mr. Willingham doesn’t say that there is room for disagreement about the latter point; he simply declares that I’m wrong. His evidence consists of two citations. The first deals with pilots’ perception, and I confess I’m unable to understand the relevance of this dependent variable to the topic at hand (namely, efforts to promote children’s intellectual proficiency). Second, he mentions a researcher whose chapter I just now tracked down because I hadn’t been familiar with him. It turns out that Professor Ericsson’s analysis is primarily devoted not to academic learning but to achievement in sports and music as well as a few other activities like typing and chess. More to the point, Ericsson is concerned with whether accomplishment in such fields is a function of deliberate practice as opposed to natural talent or “mere experience” (meaning that improvement would occur automatically).

I’m still trying to figure out how a citation to this monograph could be seen as supporting the claim that I am “in error” when I talk about the extremely limited value — and even counterproductive effects — of assigning practice homework, even in math, if our goal is to help students understand ideas from the inside out. Incidentally, the enormous anthology in which Ericsson’s essay appears contains only one chapter about mathematics, and it is confined to the question of what produces superior facility with calculation.

2. PRAISE: Mr. Willingham quotes a single line from my book [|Punished by Rewards] (which is about 400 pages long, 100 pages of which are devoted to notes and references) and then adds one more sentence that is supposed to summarize my views on the subject – before proceeding to accuse me of oversimplifying. I can see only three possibilities here: I have been terribly unclear in my lengthy discussion of the nuances of motivation, rewards, and praise; he hasn’t read much of the book; or he is so determined to charge me with being inaccurate or misleading that he ignores evidence to the contrary and hopes his readers will take what he says on faith. He offers two specific assertions. First, “rewards can reduce motivation, but only when motivation was somewhat high to start with.” If motivation is sufficiently low, then, yes, there isn’t much room for it to fall. But (a) motivation is often low precisely because of the damage done by rewards administered earlier; (b) rewards are likely to prevent the recovery of intrinsic motivation regardless of the reason it’s currently in short supply; and (c) rewards may be disadvantageous in other ways. In a four-page response to the question “If we’re worried about reducing intrinsic motivation, then what’s the problem with giving people rewards for doing things they don’t find interesting?” (PBR, pp. 87-90), I offered a variety of other responses, both theoretical and practical, that challenge Mr. Willingham’s unqualified pronouncement. (Among the studies cited in that section is one by Danner and Lonky that found “extrinsic rewards were no more effective in increasing the motivation of children whose initial level of interest was low than were simple requests to work on the tasks.”) Second, we’re told that the effect of praise will depend on how it’s construed. Well, yes and no. Verbal rewards are often difficult to construe in a way that isn’t controlling, or that don’t serve to devalue the activity in question, or that don’t communicate conditional acceptance of the child. Nevertheless, I think there is some truth to this statement and I have said so in print. In fact, my concern about behaviorism in its various guises is partly based on the tendency to slight people’s attitudes, goals, perspectives, and constructions, focusing instead just on observable actions and results: doing homework, taking (or doing well on) tests, giving or receiving rewards, and so on. I think any fair-minded reader would concede that what I do in Punished – and what I try to do in most of my writings – is say, “Things are not as simple as they’re generally made out to be.” The irony of accusing me of oversimplifying may offer a frisson of satisfaction to someone who doesn’t care for my views, but I’ve yet to see evidence that there’s any truth to the charge.

3. SELF-DISCIPLINE: As with the topic of homework, I am accused of failing to accept the point of view of the very people whose work I have called into question. Sure, there’s room for disagreement about how self-discipline and self-control are defined, but if the writers Mr. Willingham mentions really relied on such a benign understanding of these terms, I wouldn’t have had any beef with their claims and I wouldn’t have bothered to write that essay. Nor is my critique – which he simplifies beyond recognition (again) as “authoritarian control leads to negative outcomes” – anywhere near as uncontroversial as he makes it out. I draw from the work of serious psychologists (Jack Block, Ed Deci, and others) who, having read the essay, seem to share my sense that this is a serious, substantive clash. Take a look at it ([|www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/selfdiscipline.htm]) – including the sidebar that offers a closer look at Mischel’s and Seligman’s work. You may not agree with my take on the issue, but you may end up as perplexed as I was by Mr. Willingham’s accusations.

As for fallacies, I think it’s perfectly valid to contrast an approach that focuses on behaviors with one that puts the intentionality of the actor front and center. That doesn’t mean I’m unaware of the limits of dichotomies or unfamiliar with learning theories that aren’t purely behaviorist or constructivist.

Mr. Willingham also accuses me of engaging in the fallacy of “misleading vividness” – and then, perhaps realizing that this category is completely inapt (look at the Wikipedia entry he cites and try to find anything in my article that is even remotely similar), he promptly amends the indictment to an unspecified “variant of that fallacy.” My supposed sin here is spending most of my article criticizing an idea but including a brief qualification saying that some versions of that idea may not be objectionable. Mr. Willingham may have wished that I spent more time on a related but separate question (e.g., Under exactly what circumstances is that idea bad?) – a question that I did in fact address, by the way – but his irritation that I didn’t write the article he would have written hardly justifies the charge that I am guilty of a logical fallacy. Is there a name for the meta-fallacy of accusing people of committing logical fallacies just because one disagrees with them?

One last point: After challenging my various criticisms of behaviorism, Mr. Willingham suggests that such criticisms are basically a waste of time because behaviorism is “now ignored by most learning theorists.” Either he and I are defining that word very differently – extremely narrowly, in his case — or else he is making an observation about the fact that most serious scholars have rejected behaviorism, per se (which is true) and then inviting readers to infer that it has lost most of its influence over how students are educated, employees are managed, and children are raised (which is decidedly false). In fact, it is their attachment to behaviorism – or something very much like it – that seems to animate some of my most vociferous critics.

Obviously I’m not a disinterested observer here, but after reading Mr. Willingham’s post carefully, I’m at a loss to find a single instance of a factual error or a logical fallacy in the essays and books to which he’s reacting. Have I ever written an article in which my quick summary of an idea has the effect of oversimplifying it? Probably. But the qualifications, explanations, elaborations, and citations are almost always present in the book from which the article is distilled.

One can’t take the positions I do and expect not to be criticized. That’s why I do my homework (if you’ll excuse the expression) before I publish. But it’s disappointing whenever a writer recasts reasonable disagreements as a moral or intellectual deficit on the part of the person he or she is criticizing. If I’ve ever treated people with whom I disagree the way Mr. Willingham has treated me, I apologize.

– Alfie Kohn [|www.alfiekohn.org]