The Schools Our Children Deserve by Alfie Kohn

Published 1999 · 85,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Education & Reference, Nonfiction, Politics & Society, Psychology

How hard is The Schools Our Children Deserve to read?

The Schools Our Children Deserve scores 19 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 28 out of 100
Educational research terminology. Accessible to parents and teachers.
Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
Abstraction: 32 out of 100
Research-based arguments grounded in classroom examples.
Information density: 48 out of 100
Dense with research citations and policy analysis.
Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
Direct, thesis-driven argument.
Symbolic density: 80 out of 100
Analytical rather than symbolic.
Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
Passionate advocacy controlled by research evidence.
Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
Kohn provides a clear alternative vision.
Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
Two parts: critique and alternative. Well-organized chapters.

How The Schools Our Children Deserve is regarded

The Schools Our Children Deserve holds a literary regard score of 39 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

About the author

Alfie Kohn