Alfie Kohn

I’m delighted to see coverage of Alfie Kohn’s organizing against “teaching to the test” (“Crusader Argues School Reforms Hinder Learning,” Feb. 22). I have no quarrel with standards used as guidelines for a knowledge base, but the frantic rush to narrowly foxcus on standards-based teaching has sucked the life out of the classroom and straitjacketed teachers. One teacher told me that every minute of her day is dictated by the standards; someone comes in to check on her, and she’d better be teaching what is in the standards at that moment.

In the 14 years I have been trying to get the best education for my children, I almost never hear discussions of methodology. I hear only what to teach, rather than how to teach it. I firmly believe that by providing the right environment, our children’s innate desire to learn will flourish and they will become self-educators. Between their natural curiosity and our positive expectations and encouragement, the standards will take care of themselves.

In the meantime, our children suffer, our teachers suffer and, ultimately, our society will suffer.

SALLY ROSLOFF

Northridge

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You should get your own “bunch o’ facts” right. The book by E.D. Hirsch so foolishly maligned by Kohn is titled “The Schools We Need: And Why We Don’t Have Them.” In this incredible book, which every concerned parent must read, Hirsch shows how the very reforms Kohn is screaming for have been in place for years and have themselves been responsible for the present mess our schools are in.

As far as facts and memorization are concerned, I quote Hirsch: “Relevant background knowledge can be conceived as a stock of potential analogies that enable new ideas to be assimilated. Experts in any field learn new things faster than novices do, because their rich, highly accessible background knowledge gives them a greater variety of means for capturing the new ideas. This enabling function of relevant prior knowledge is essential at every stage of learning.”

JESSICA BARKER

San Pedro