Alfie Kohn Biography

Alfie Kohn writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. He is the author of 12 books, including Punished by Rewards, The Schools Our Children Deserve, Beyond Discipline, Unconditional Parenting, The Homework Myth, and most recently, Feel-Bad Education and Other Contrarian Essays on Children and Schooling.

Kohn has been described in Time magazine as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores." His criticisms of competition and rewards have helped to shape the thinking of educators – as well as parents and managers – across the country and abroad. Kohn has been featured on hundreds of TV and radio programs, including The Today Show and two appearances on Oprah; he has been profiled in The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, while his work has been described and debated in many other leading publications.

Kohn lectures widely at universities and to school faculties, parent groups, and corporations. In addition to speaking at staff development seminars and keynoting national education conferences on a regular basis, he conducts workshops for teachers and administrators on various topics. Among them: "Motivation from the Inside Out: Rethinking Rewards, Assessment, and Learning" and "Beyond Bribes and Threats: Realistic Alternatives to Controlling Students' Behavior." The latter corresponds to his book Beyond Discipline: From Compliance To Community, which he describes as "a modest attempt to overthrow the entire field of classroom management."

Kohn's various books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, Hebrew, Thai, Malaysian, and Italian. He has also contributed to publications ranging from the Journal of Education to Ladies Home Journal, and from the Nation to the Harvard Business Review ("Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work"). His efforts to make research in human behavior accessible to a general audience have also been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Parents, and Psychology Today.

Kohn’s recent articles include "Turning Children into Data" in Education Week; "Five Reasons to Stop Saying 'Good Job!'" in Young Children; "How to Create Nonreaders" in English Journal; and "Why Self-Discipline Is Overrated" in Phi Delta Kappan.