Alfie Kohn's Article: What Does It Mean To Be Well-Educated

“What Does it Mean to Be Well-Educated,” an article from Principal Leadership on March 2003 by Alfie Kohn. He argues that our education system can improve but first our mindset must change on what it means to be educated. He uses his wife as an example her Alma Mater is Harvard University, an IV university, she is a highly intelligent physician but had poor grammar and very poor mathematical skills. First, he asks that we understand the purpose of an education. His view is that education is supposed to help us be better people. Second, he asked us to think about looking at evaluating people vs their education to find what have people actually learned in their education not just hog wash facts that we will likely lose over time. Third, he talks about the absence of consensus a discussion on how we try to find …show more content…
His last point is a point that looks at the solution (in his point of view) that we would be more towards problems, projects, and question rather than facts, skills, and disciplines one in which can let students and teachers to be part of the course and find new ways to educate students. He also points out that it is a better idea to remodel the current education system, and that the current system of low quality education is also found with low quality testing. The main solution to this problem is this we should get the five “habits of mind” which are evidence (epistemology), point of view (leave little to no room for doubt/ perspective toward any representations), connections (relationships between one to another), supposition (other possibilities), and relevance (is this truly important). I have both agreement and disagreement with this article. I agree that we have a problem with our education, but there are some