Against ‘Competitiveness’

Why good teachers aren't thinking about the global economy.

By Alfie Kohn

Here are some phrases that might reassure us if they were used to defend a particular education policy: “excitement about learning” ... “deeper thinking about questions that matter” ... “promoting social and moral development” ... “democratic society.”

And here’s a phrase that ought to make us wince and back away slowly: “competitiveness in a 21st-century global economy.”

For years, champions of high-stakes testing and mandatory curriculum standards have invoked a need to ratchet up the skills of future employees and, by extension, the revenues of U.S. corporations. Now, though, opponents of such policies are using the identical argument. In recent months, two prominent critics of the federal No Child Left Behind Act have argued in separate articles that the law’s effect on instruction isn’t consistent with what’s needed...