Kohl, Herbert 1937–

(Herbert R. Kohl)

PERSONAL: Born August 22, 1937, in Bronx, New York; son of Samuel (a building contractor) and Marion Kohl; married Judith Murdock (a teacher and weaver), 1963; children: Antonia, Erica, Joshua. Education: Harvard University, A.B. (magna cum laude), 1958; graduate study, University College, Oxford, 1958–59; Teachers College, Columbia University, M.A., 1962, additional graduate study, 1965–66.

ADDRESSES: Home—Point Arena, CA.

CAREER: Elementary school teacher in New York, NY, 1962–66; Horace Mann-Lincoln Institute, New York, research associate, 1966–67; Teachers and Writers Collaborative, New York, director, 1966–67; University of California, Berkeley, visiting associate professor of English education, 1967–68; Other Ways (public alternative high school), Berkeley, CA, teacher and director, 1968–71; Berkeley Unified School District, Berkeley, consultant on public alternative schools, 1971–72; Center for Open Learning and Teaching, Berkeley, co-director, 1972–77; Coastal Ridge Research and Education Center, Point Arena, CA, director, 1978–. Lang Visiting Professor, Swarthmore College, 2005–06. Educational consultant to University of Minneapolis, Des Moines Community Corporation, University of California, San Mateo County Schools, Stockton Unified School District, and other public and private institutions, 1967–73. Member of board, Atari Institute.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, PEN American Center (member of executive board; coordinator of PEN American Center West), Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Henry fellowship, 1958–59; Woodrow Wilson fellowship, 1959–60; National Endowment for the Arts award for nonfiction article, 1968; National Book Award for Children's Literature, 1978, for The View from the Oak; The View from the Oak was selected one of New York Public Library's Books for the Teen Age, 1980, 1981, and 1982.

WRITINGS:

The Age of Complexity, Mentor (New York, NY), 1965.

The Language and Education of the Deaf, Center for Urban Education (New York, NY), 1966.

36 Children, New American Library (New York, NY), illustrated by Robert George Jackson III, 1967, published with a new introduction, 1988.

Teaching the Unteachable: The Story of an Experiment in Children's Writing, New York Review of Books (New York, NY), 1967.

The Open Classroom: A Practical Guide to a New Way of Teaching, Vintage (New York, NY), 1969.

Fables: A Curriculum Unit, Teachers and Writers (New York, NY), 1969.

A University for Our Time, Other Ways (Berkeley, CA), 1970.

(Editor, with Victor Hernandez Cruz) Stuff: A Collection of Poems, Visions, and Imaginative Happenings from Young Writers in Schools—Open and Closed, World Publishing (New York, NY), 1970.

Golden Boy as Anthony Cool: A Photo Essay on Names and Graffiti, Dial (New York, NY), 1972.

(Editor) An Anthology of Fables, Houghton (Boston, MA), Volume I, 1972, Volume II, 1973.

Reading: How to—A People's Guide to Alternative Ways of Teaching and Testing Reading, Dutton (New York, NY), 1973, reprinted, Boynton Cook (Upper Montclair, NJ), 1998.

(Editor) Stories of Sport and Society, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1973.

Games, Math and Writing in the Open Classroom, Random House (New York, NY), 1973.

Half the House, Dutton (New York, NY), 1974.

On Teaching, Schocken (New York, NY), 1976, published with a new introduction by the author, 1986.

(With wife, Judith Kohl) The View from the Oak: The Private Worlds of Other Creatures (juvenile), illustrated by Roger Bayless, Sierra Club (San Francisco, CA), 1977.

Growing with Your Children, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1978.

A Book of Puzzlements: Play and Invention with Language, Schocken (New York, NY), 1981.

Basic Skills: A Plan for Your Children, a Program for All Children, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1982.

(With Ted Kahn, Len Lindsay, and Pat Cleland) Atari Games and Recreations, illustrated by Steve Oliff, Reston (Reston, VA), 1982.

Insight: Reflections on Reading, Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1982.

Conscience and Human Rights, Amnesty International (New York, NY), 1983.

(With Judith Kohl) Pack, Band, and Colony: The World of Social Animals, illustrated by Margaret La Farge, Farrar, Strauss (New York, NY), 1983.

(With Kahn and Dale Disharoon) Atari PILOT Games and Recreation for Learning, illustrated by Steve Oliff, Reston (Reston, VA), 1983.

(With daughter, Erica Kohl) Where Is Emmett Gold? A Solve-It-Yourself Rock Music Mystery, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1983.

(With Disharoon) 41 and [frac12] Fun Projects for the Atari Home Computer, Reston (Reston, VA), 1984.

(With Disharoon) 41 and [frac12] Fun Projects for the Commodore 64, Reston (Reston, VA), 1984.

Atari Puzzlements for the ATARI Home Computer, illustrated by C. Micha, Reston (Reston, VA), 1984.

Commodore 64 Puzzlements?, illustrated by C. Micha, Reston (Reston, VA), 1984.

Growing Minds: On Becoming a Teacher, Harper (New York, NY), 1984.

(With Michael Potts) Homework Helper for the ATARI: Useful Programs for ATARI Computers, Reston (Reston, VA), 1984.

Mathematical Puzzlements: Play and Invention with Mathematics, Schocken (New York, NY), 1987.

Making Theater: Developing Plays with Young People, Teachers & Writers (New York, NY), 1988.

The Question Is College: Guiding Your Child to the Right Choices after High School, Times Books (New York, NY), 1989, reprinted, Boynton Cook, 1998.

(With Myles Horton and Kohl) The Long Haul: An Autobiography, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1990.

I Won't Learn from You: The Role of Assent in Learning (also see below), Milkweed Editions (Minneapolis, MN), 1991.

(With Erica Kohl and others) From Archetype to Zeitgeist: Powerful Ideas for Powerful Thinking, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1992.

"I Won't Learn from You": And Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment (contains "I Won't Learn from You" and other essays), New Press (New York, NY), 1994.

(With others) Exploring Creative Writer: Imaginative and Fun Computer Activities, Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1994.

(Editor, with Colin Greer) A Call to Character: A Family Treasury of Stories, Poems, Plays, Proverbs, and Fables to Guide the Development of Values for You and Your Children, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995.

Should We Burn Babar? Essays on Children's Literature and the Power of Stories, New Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(Compiler, with Colin Greer) The Plain Truth of Things: A Treasury: The Role of Values in a Complex World, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1997.

(With Laurie Olsen) Made in America: Immigrant Students in Our Public Schools, New Press (New York, NY), 1997.

The Discipline of Hope: Learning from a Lifetime of Teaching, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1998.

The Question Is College: On Finding and Doing Work You Love, Boynton (Portsmouth, NH), 1998.

A Grain of Poetry: How to Read Contemporary Poems and Make Them a Part of Your Life, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.

Stupidity and Tears: Essays on Teaching and Learning under Pressure, New Press (New York, NY), 2003.

She Would Not Be Moved: How We Tell the Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, introduction by Marian Wright Edelman, New Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Also author of Insides, Outsides, Loops and Lines and Spelling for Fun: Book One and Two. Contributor to Computers in the Classroom: How Teachers and Students Are Using Technology to Transform Learning, edited by Fred Silverman, Jossey-Bass (San Francisco, CA), 1997. Author of introduction, This Book Is about Schools, edited by Sata Repo, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1970. Author of column, "Insight," in Teacher, 1968–80. Contributor of articles and reviews to New York Review of Books, New York Times, Learning Magazine, Times Educational Supplement, Harvard Educational Review, This Magazine Is about Schools, Cultural Affairs, New School Education Journal, and other publications. Member of editorial board, People's Yellow Pages and Learning Magazine; member of advisory board, Interaction.

SIDELIGHTS: Herbert Kohl is one of the most persistent voices in the call for the reevaluation and reformation of the American educational system. His concept of an "open classroom" has particularly influenced educators and has inspired many alternative educational experiments. In The Open Classroom: A Practical Guide to a New Way of Teaching, Kohl explains his theories and the techniques he uses in an open classroom. The goal of such teaching is to help students to make worthwhile educational choices and to find themselves.

In 36 Children, Kohl details how the use of open classroom techniques was successful in his own teaching in a ghetto elementary school. Nat Hentoff, writing in the New Yorker, explained that in this book, "Kohl shows how a sixth-grade class of wary Negro children in East Harlem learned to trust him as a teacher and trust themselves and thereby beat the system. Temporarily. After their one year with Kohl, most of them, too, were mutilated, but they demonstrated in that one year what they could have become—poor as they were, black as they were, and without a head start. In this book, they are trenchant proof that their defeat is the fault not of themselves or their families but of the system."

In his own writing about 36 Children, Kohl said that he was "able to take children who had experienced failure and self-hatred in school and enable them to flower emotionally and intellectually. This involved my throwing out the standard curriculum, reworking the schedule of the day, and most of all, listening and learning from my students and building a curriculum that used the strengths in their lives."

Reading: How to—A People's Guide to Alternative Ways of Teaching and Testing Reading explores the question of illiteracy, suggesting methods that teachers and parents can use to teach reading more effectively. Kohl sees illiteracy as a failure not of the child but of the educational system. "Kohl," wrote Barbara Breasted in the Christian Science Monitor, "has never met a child who didn't want to learn to read. But this … educational reformer has met many adults who make children afraid they can't learn to read. It is the spirit in which reading is taught that needs to be changed."

Examining the assumptions of modern education, Kohl suggests in Basic Skills: A Plan for Your Child, a Program for All Children that schools have not concentrated on certain fundamentals which all children should learn. Education's first goal, Kohl noted, is to "develop informed, thoughtful and sensitive citizens." This can be done, he wrote, by teaching students six basic skills: "The ability to use language well and thoughtfully,… the ability to think through problems and experiment with solutions,… the ability to understand scientific and technical ideas and use tools,… the ability to use imagination and to participate in and appreciate personal and group expression,… the ability to understand how people function in groups,… [and] learning how to learn throughout life and to contribute to the nurturance of others."

Kohl's Growing Minds: On Becoming a Teacher is more personal in tone than some of his other books. In it, he describes the process he went through in becoming a teacher. It is a "pep talk" for prospective teachers, according to a Virginia Quarterly Review critic, a book that "reminds us that a career in education is still one of the most spiritually rewarding endeavors." Assessing the book in Antioch Review, Louis King stated that reading it had been, for him, "a cheering experience … Kohl rechallenges us as a nation to generate more good experiences for our young. He is lucid, his reflections uncluttered, his concern obviously genuine and practical."

Several of Kohl's books are collections of his essays. In I Won't Learn from You: And Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment, he examines the notion that if children find their school environment abhorrent, they may simply refuse to learn or even hide their learning from teachers. A Publishers Weekly writer deemed the five essays in I Won't Learn from You "inspirational" and "optimistic," and credits them with outlining strategies "designed to unlock students' energy, intelligence and drive by encouraging them to envision ways to improve their world."

Another well-reviewed collection of Kohl's is Should We Burn Babar? Essays on Children's Literature and the Power of Stories. In the five essays contained in the book, he examines the sexist, racist, and colonialist elements of many children's classics. While the title suggests a book burning of those classics with which Kohl does not approve, "his aim is not to convince us to abandon them but rather to try to understand how these ideologies have affected and continue to affect us," noted Marie L. Lally in the Library Journal. Several reviewers reserved special praise for an essay tracing the inaccuracies contained in most versions of the story of Rosa Parks, who led the influential bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, to pave the way for desegregation. Kohl points out that although Mrs. Parks was a committed activist working for several civil rights groups, she is usually portrayed as a tired old lady who impulsively refused to give up her seat on a bus one day. This sort of distortion is typical of a system that seeks to maintain the status quo, according to Kohl. Commonweal writer Clare Collins found Should We Burn Babar? "compelling" and "useful," and added: "Kohl's carefully constructed essays and narratives left me convinced that he is a gifted educator as well as scholar."

In a later work, She Would Not Be Moved: How We Tell the Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Kohl expanded upon his essay that appeared in Should We Burn Babar? Kohl presents a factual account of Parks's courageous, defiant act, noting that she was not the first to be arrested for challenging the desegregation law, and he discusses how presenting misinformation does a disservice not only to the individuals who made history but also to the schoolchildren who study them. According to a Kirkus Reviews critic, "Kohl proposes a similarly useful alternative narrative, one that does not disguise or whitewash the facts of organized racism." School Library Journal contributor Carol Joan Collins observed that the author's "sensitive exploration of a thorny problem make this a book that can be helpful to everyone concerned about how young people understand race."

In Stupidity and Tears: Essays on Teaching and Learning under Pressure, a collection of six essays, Kohl looks at the issues facing the nation's public schools. He discusses the pressures teachers face on the job, saving his harshest criticism for educational reforms such as standardized testing and mandated curriculums. He also offers examples of instructors who find ways to teach creatively within the system. According to a contributor in Publishers Weekly. "Kohl stresses the need to examine a wider range of transformational experiences (social violence, deprivation, altruism, etc.) to understand their impact on children of diverse backgrounds."

As trends in education have become increasingly conservative, many of Kohl's ideas have fallen out of favor in the public system. Former Secretary of Education William Bennett was quoted by Allan Parachini in the Los Angeles Times as saying that "if he [Kohl] ever was influential, it would be … when goofiness in education was much more in vogue. He's pretty much of a flake." Yet Kohl remains dedicated to his ideas and is convinced that the pendulum will swing his way once more. Parachini quoted Kohl as answering his critics thus: "The open education movement … never affected more than 5 or 6 percent of the system. When people say [the perceived failure of education to teach fundamental skills] is the fault of openness and progressiveness, the point is it can't be. If they had ever given us a chance to make massive and fundamental change, I would accept the blame if we had failed. But we never had the chance."

As for the current educational climate, Kohl remarked to Parachini: "I wouldn't even call what is happening today a preoccupation with test scores. I would say it is an obsession…. I'm not against standards. I just think there are many ways to achieve them. When you set them as rigidly as people like Bennett and Honig are trying to set them, you lock the teacher into achieving the standards [for the test] rather than teaching so the kids can come up to the standards." Answering the criticism of Bennett and Bennett's assistant Chester Finn, Kohl declared: "I think they are hard-edged, hard-nosed and dangerous. To them, it's a matter of business: 'How do we put our dollars in and get the maximum number of kids out?' I wonder about all the kids who don't come out and the kids who do in terms of how they come out."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Libraries, March, 1975.

Antioch Review, summer, 1984, Louis King, review of Growing Minds: On Becoming a Teacher, pp. 376-377.

Atlantic Monthly, January, 1996, pp. 104-108.

Bloomsbury Review, July-August, 1993.

Booklist, October 15, 1992, pp. 452-453; January 1, 2004, Vanessa Bush, review of Stupidity and Tears: Essays on Teaching and Learning under Pressure, p. 796.

Carleton Miscellany, winter, 1969.

Choice, July-August, 1984, p. 1654.

Christian Science Monitor, May 23, 1973, Barbara Breasted, review of Reading: How to—A People's Guide to Alternative Ways of Teaching and Testing Reading.

Commonweal, April 5, 1996, Clare Collins, review of Should We Burn Babar? Essays on Children's Literature and the Power of Stories, pp. 30-31.

Instructor, April, 1982.

Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 1994, pp. 199-200; September 1, 2005, review of She Would Not Be Moved: How We Tell the Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, p. 958.

Kliatt, spring, 1985.

Library Journal, July, 1995, Marie L. Lally, review of Should We Burn Babar?, p. 96; February 1, 1996, pp. 86-87; January, 2004, Jean Caspers, review of Stupidity and Tears, p. 129.

Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1987, Section 6, p. 1.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 11, 1979; May 2, 1982; January 21, 1996, p. 15.

New Republic, December 23, 1967; November 21, 1970.

New Yorker, March 16, 1968, Nat Hentoff, review of 36 Children.

New York Review of Books, May 3, 1973.

New York Times, July 9, 1973.

New York Times Book Review, August 20, 1995, p. 16.

Progressive, May, 1993, pp. 40-43.

Publishers Weekly, February 21, 1994, review of "I Won't Learn from You": And Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment, p. 241; May 29, 1995, p. 75; November 10, 2003, review of Stupidity and Tears, p. 51.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 2005, review of She Would Not Be Moved.

Saturday Review, May 27, 1972.

School Library Journal, February, 2006, Carol Jones Collins, review of She Would Not Be Moved, p. 160.

Times Literary Supplement, December 18, 1970.

Virginia Quarterly Review, summer, 1984, review of Growing Minds, pp. 93-94.

Washington Post Book World, April 12, 1970; July 11, 1982.