What If We’re Asking the Wrong Questions About Education?

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🧐 1 Idea Worth Considering

Most conversations about education sound the same.

How much homework is too much?
Which grading system works best?
How do we motivate kids to try harder?

But there’s a bigger question we rarely ask.

Why do we use these systems at all?

Alfie Kohn, an education researcher, often reminds us that real change does not come from improving broken tools. It comes from questioning why we are using them in the first place.

Instead of asking how to make grades fairer, he asks why we reduce children to numbers and letters at all.
Instead of asking how to motivate kids, he asks why learning stopped being meaningful on its own.

This shift matters.

Because many of the tools we use to “improve” learning are actually weakening it.

Grades. Stickers. Prizes. Rankings. Punishments.

These are called external rewards. Research shows that when kids work mainly for rewards, their natural interest fades. Psychologists call this the loss of intrinsic motivation. Kids stop asking, “Why is this interesting?” and start asking, “What do I get if I do this?”

Over time, learning turns into a transaction.

Think back to your own childhood.

Did you ever feel excited to learn something, only to lose interest once it became about marks or approval?
Did you feel anxious waiting for results, worried about disappointing someone?
Did you ever stop enjoying a subject because you were afraid of being wrong?

Most adults did.

And yet, we often recreate the same systems for our children, believing they are necessary.

But what if children are not unmotivated?
What if they are just tired of being controlled?

Much of modern education and parenting is built around compliance. Getting kids to sit still. Follow rules. Finish tasks. Meet expectations.

But children are not problems to manage.

They are humans with needs.

They need safety before pressure.
They need meaning before motivation.
They need connection before correction.

Research in child development shows that when kids feel emotionally safe and respected, their curiosity grows. When they feel controlled, watched, or constantly evaluated, their learning shuts down.

Alfie Kohn puts it simply: the question is not how to get kids to do what we want. The question is what do children need, and how do we meet those needs.

When we change the question, everything changes.

Education stops being about control and starts becoming about care.
Parenting stops being about obedience and becomes about relationship.
Learning stops being about rewards and becomes about wonder.

Maybe the problem was never our kids.

Maybe it was the questions we kept asking.

And once we ask better questions, we can finally start building something better for them.