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Reposted by Alfie Kohn

Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

America if the news covered it like those countries Over There

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From the archives: "Who's Asking?" - Good teachers pose thoughtful questions (with an emphasis on those without right answers). Great teachers elicit and even organize the curriculum around *students'* questions: www.alfiekohn.org/article/ques...

alfiekohn.org

Who’s Asking?

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP September 2015 Who’s Asking? By Alfie Kohn It seems only fitting to explore the role of questions in education by asking questions about the process of doing so. I propose tha...

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Not to defend (or suggest we stop prodding) mainstream Democrats, but this analogy plays into the tendency to treat Republicans as having no agency; what they do is just a fact of life for which we shouldn't bother holding them responsible.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I've never understood how the right-wing position on these issues are supposed to be less "ideological" than the views they're condemning.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Fascinating account showing how a false claim can become widely accepted (and propagated by multiple independent sources) as a result of a common academic shortcut: citing a source you haven't actually read after seeing it cited by another source: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

is.gd

Academic urban legends - Ole Bjørn Rekdal, 2014

Many of the messages presented in respectable scientific publications are, in fact, based on various forms of rumors. Some of these rumors appear so frequently,...

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Reposted by Alfie Kohn

Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

listen i won’t shed a single tear for kim or any of the women who work for trump, but it remains interesting that only the women in his orbit suffer consequences for being pieces of shit

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Don't want to get overconfident, but there's a rumor I'm about to be named one of "70 under 70."

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Another example: 1st Trump administration planned to turn over large swaths of Utah monuments to mining interests. A Republican filed a bill to rename a highway in that area for Trump to honor him for this. A Democrat pledged to offer an amendment to name the frontage road the Stormy Daniels Rampway

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

"Where 20th-cent. fascism manipulates language to destroy truth, 21st-cent. fascism controls reality through algorithms & the outright purchase of media properties...all while accusing its victims as the perpetrators of the very crimes that [it] openly conspires to commit" -Gil Duran, The Nerd Reich

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

"As educators we have helped build (or are complicit in) a system that creates a great deal of pressure around grades. We shouldn't blame (or worse, belittle) students for the failures of that system" by accusing *them* of "grade grubbing." - Jesse Stommel (@jessifer.bsky.social)

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

You can always tell who the good guys are. They're the ones trying to sabotage human rights organizations and attacking people who are trying to hold war criminals accountable.

Trump Administration Hits International Criminal Court With Severe Sanctions

US. officials announced the new, sweeping punishments just hours after the Nobel Peace Prize committee gave its annual honor to a former court judge.

Israel Denounces the Decision to Award the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay

Ms. Pillay, a human rights lawyer, was drawn into the international spotlight last year as chair of a commission that found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

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Reposted by Alfie Kohn

Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 09/10/2026

Hard to overstate how much Hegseth's execution stream mirrors the U.S. military's traditional description of ISIS propaganda: broadcast killings designed to send a message, strike fear and create a social media spectacle. Will almost certainly be repurposed by online terror cells

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

@adamserwer.bsky.social: "The catch-22 facing nonwhite immigrants: If you are poor, you are a moocher, and if you are gainfully employed, you are taking a job from a hardworking American. The only way to be a good immigrant is to be white and Christian": tinyurl.com/2mva9z8h

tinyurl.com

The GOP’s Message to Immigrants

Be white and Christian, or America doesn’t want you.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

A genocide scholar cites the new documentary "NAZA" in reflecting on how abstractions help ordinary Israelis rationalize their willing participation in mass murder: tinyurl.com/5n9yrj8w

These are not the sadists of the popular imagination of what genocide looks like. They are not the typical supporters of extremist ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Many are upper-middle class graduates of the best schools who joined prestigious intelligence units, perhaps with the expectation of moving on after their army service to the hi-tech industry. But they, along with the
fighter pilots, are responsible, it appears, for the vast number of civilian casualties in Gaza. What motivated them to rain down so much death and destruction? An officer ponders this question briefly: “All I can say is that we’re completing the mission. That was the mission.”

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Doesn't the question, with its odd request for a "personal" definition, sort of invite tendentious nonsense? "How do you personally define 'vice president'"? "I personally define it as a bearded weenie who tries to make fascism digestible."

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

It's a lot less convenient to instigate a civil war from behind bars

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Some teachers say: Don't tell kids the answer; make 'em work to find it. But the real problem is a curriculum focused on questions that *have* right answers (accompanied by multiple-choice tests). That may not be ideal even in medical school: ow.ly/twZrd

ow.ly

The Real World Is Not an Exam

For students just entering medicine after tens of thousands of test questions, many medical problems don’t have the single best answer they do on exams.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

In other words, he's getting exactly what he paid for.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

If this was meant to bring Bill Cosby to mind, it worked.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

3/3 Years ago, 2 small studies discovered that in less traditional classrooms you literally couldn't tell which kids supposedly "had" this thing called ADHD. As one clinician put it, “We've decided as a society that it's too expensive to modify the kid's environment. So we have to modify the kid.”

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

2/3 A 2022 study found that students labeled as ADHD are more compliant - and turn out more seatwork - when they're medicated. But they didn't learn more on meds: bit.ly/3E4HWxT. What if the Rx and even the diagnosis itself are largely about (non)compliance?

bit.ly

APA PsycNet

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

1/3 Arguably more vital than the shift proposed here - seeing ADHD as a problem with sustained engagement (vs. "attention") - is something mentioned only briefly: seeing it as an interaction between person & environment. The problem may be with the task more than the individual: tinyurl.com/2y9562vf

tinyurl.com

What if A.D.H.D. Isn’t About Attention at All? (Gift Article)

Evidence suggests that it really affects what psychiatrists like me call sustained engagement — an important difference in understanding how to think about the condition.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

An inspirational, only-in-America story: With little more than determination, a dream, and less than a trillion dollars, a lone Nazi sets out to make the U.S. Senate his own.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

A vast, Trump-friendly media empire

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I can't judge how probable it is that AI will cause (or, more likely, be used by people to cause) a catastrophe. But for god's sake, can we debate this without anthropomorphizing? AI cannot cheat, "go rogue," "hallucinate," or be your friend. It doesn't have rights or a soul. It's fucking software.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Nah, he suddenly realized that it was an affront to the rule of law and basic ethics. Tomorrow he'll apologize and promise to do better.

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Reposted by Alfie Kohn

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Openly bragging about ethnic cleansing. That's how you know they're the Good Guys.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Even if true, less an argument against democracy than an argument for questioning the overriding value of efficiency

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I believe that song was "Let's Get Fossil Fuel."

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I believe that song was "Let's Get Fossil Fuel"

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Do you have any idea how much the price of a decent yacht has gone up lately??

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Reposted by Alfie Kohn

Jay Kuo @nycjayjay.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

This is a community note for the ages.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"The election denialism that inspired MAGA loyalists to attack the Capitol has metastasized into an animating feature of [GOP] politics." For ex., "the question in GA today is less whether its officials could resist Trump's pressure again [than what they] might do on their own": tinyurl.com/4dyuej69

But as November approaches, the most scrious thrcats posed to free and fair elections no longer come from the White House itself. Instead, they are local, where much of the power over elections actually resides, and they stem from the continuing absorption of Trump's Big Lic into our political culture. In statchouses and county offices, a cohort of election deniers has taken control of significant parts of the nation's clectoral infrastructure. Some of its members have replaced the officials and legislators who rejected Trump's push to corrupt the 2020 race. A grassroots movement of Big Lie belicvers has meanwhile been organized and trained as poll workers or informal observers to sound alarms over local clections they deem suspect in any way.

‘The November clections represent something new in American politics: For the first time, a coalition of partncrs at the local, sate, and federal levels is ready to pull off the kind of clection heist that cluded the president back in 2020. At the very least, the midterms could serve as a trial run for this coalition ahead of the 2028 presidential race, when much of Trump's legacy will be at stake.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

In his new book, Paul Theroux quotes a Canadian woman who describes Americans as "a fearful people," observing that so many own guns. She asks what they're so afraid of. Theroux thinks the answer is obvious: "They're afraid of other Americans with guns."

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Makes court expansion more urgent. Don't know about more likely.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The problem isn't a lack of investigative reporters (like W & B); the problem is that we've become inured to corruption that the bad actors don't even bother to hide.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

This is why, according to a recent poll conducted by calling people on their landlines, the #1 problem facing our nation was said to be loose dentures.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

On the pod's latest ep (that's how the cool kids abbreviate "podcast" & "episode"): Fairtest's director Harry Feder and I discuss why high or rising test scores are meaningless at best - and bad news at worst. Listen to "Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools" here: www.alfiekohn.org/podcasts/

alfiekohn.org

Podcast

The Work Of Alfie Kohn

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Nobody expects the American Inquisition

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