Book Review: I Won’t Learn From You

It happens all the time.  Tuning in to a cable news network and hearing about gun reform - still a problem.  Sitting at a stand-still on the highway at a place notorious for congestion - still a problem.  Climate change, natural disasters, and global warming are destroying the earth - still a problem.  Homelessness and food insecurity across the world - still a problem.  We sit in faculty meetings, we listen to keynote speakers at educational conferences, we absorb information from podcasts and social media - all about the issues facing education - many of the same as 2, 5, 10, 25 years ago.  Still a problem.

I Won’t Learn From You and Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment is a series of essays by teacher and educational reformer Herbert Kohl, originally published in 1994.  The thread Kohl weaves through each essay is:  Teaching does not automatically produce learning.   From “not learning” as a conscious choice, to teachers challenging the hopelessness felt by students, to the importance of not just teaching what you love, but loving what you teach.  Each, in its own way - still a problem.

I was introduced to Kohl’s book during a keynote address by Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade, a compelling speaker and educational reformer.  In his talk about equality and equity, he specifically made connections to Kohl’s essay I Won’t Learn From You.  Here Kohl explores the provocative idea that “not learning” is a conscious choice made by kids who observe, sometimes very early, that the school system is trying to impose on them values and behaviors that are foreign and sometimes repugnant to them.  He writes, “I have encountered willed not-learning throughout my thirty years of teaching and believe that such not-learning is often and disastrously mistaken for failure to learn or inability to learn.”  In one example, Kohl describes students who were ‘behind’ in reading and, like most, assumes they had simply failed to learn how to read.  It’s easy to look for the sources of failure within the reading program, their relationships with teachers and other adults, or the social and economic conditions of their lives.  We assume students’ failure is based on something they have tried to do.  Students who have willed themselves to not learn need choice. Are we considering students’ stance toward learning (what they read in this case) in the larger context of the choices they make to create identities for themselves?  Are we offering a teacher-student relationship where we don’t force students to give up their status?

Through the essays in this book, Kohl creates a philosophy in which students and teachers work in collaboration to become the architects of student education and eventual success to both sides.  Many of Kohl’s stories are about young people refusing to learn the racist or sexist attitudes of their school’s curriculum.  It is clear that Kohl admires students who use their ability to see what is wrong and their refusal to support it, even at what might be some cost to themselves.

One might argue that a kid who spends so much time and energy figuring out how to challenge or refuse a school’s authority is as much a slave to it as the kid who devotes himself to just dealing with it.  Here is where Kohl’s thinking intersects with the message of Duncan-Andrade:  It would be better if the choice were not between learning and maintaining one’s self-respect.  Kids ought to be able to criticize their schooling without being punished for doing so - in a way other than passive resistance.  It seems like it might be time for educators to learn from students about which conditions and practices allow them to learn.

My friend Amy Grant released a song in 1997 called Takes A Little Time.  In the lyrics she says, “It takes a little time, sometimes, to get the Titanic turned back around.”  Change is slow, but there can be hope for improvement.  In May 2023, I sat on a cruise ship in the middle of Glacier Bay in Alaska.  It was beautiful.  As I looked at the scenes that only Alaska can offer, the 1,094 foot long ship with 20 decks and over 2,000 staterooms started to turn.  In no longer than an hour, the boat completely spun around four times.  A cruise ship in 2023 might be able to turn around faster than the Titanic could in 1912, but Amy Grant’s optimism for a better future points out that in time things will turn around.  

So how do we get things turned around?  First, we have to get unstuck in our beliefs about a single way to learn.  We should meet our students where they are, not the other way around.  Next, continue to build relationships with students that focus on students’ values and beliefs.  Are you clear on what those things are?  Have you asked the right questions?  Finally, know that risk taking is at the heart of teaching well.  Don’t worry about your administrator - kids always come first.  If your administrator asks how you broke through to a particular student or how you have made positive changes in your classroom that have led to higher achievement, explain what you’ve done - even if it doesn’t fit the “but this is what we’ve always done” mold.  Every administrator I have worked with has been willing to listen and offer support.  Students not learning should tell you something - if you’re willing to defy the system and listen.