interview with Alfie Kohn
cut and paste of my fav parts:
The idea that the point of school is not to help kids become deep thinkers who love to learn but rather to take standardized tests better than their counterparts in other countries represents a warped set of priorities if I've ever seen one.More and more homework is being required of younger and younger children as the tougher-standards fad trickles down. This is part of the horrific tendency to remake schools in the image of factories, where kindergarten now comes to resemble the worst first grade classrooms, where the only question that matters is how will this raise the test scores and make the adults look better.
Parents have to start asking the questions that matter. This drives me nuts, that parents confine themselves to asking piddly questions about whether kids are allowed to use the Internet for a certain assignment, or when it's due, instead of asking questions like, "What reason is there to think that this assignment is worth doing, what evidence exists to show that traditional homework is necessary for children to become better thinkers?"
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