More on rearing the spoiled child

I previously posted info about Alfie Kohn's book on Myth of the Spoiled Child. He just had a lecture on the subject to a San Francisco Jewish group.

He says the best schools never give grades and the best parents never look at report cards. [at 38:15]

He makes a lot of other claims that are supposedly backed up by research.

He says that homework before high school does no good. [at 42:00] I can believe that. I found that elementary school teachers often goof off most of the day, and then try to use homework to get the parents to do the teachers. It would be better if the schools did more teaching, and less teaching.

I like to hear scientific research on parenting, but much of his opinion seems to be driven by left-wing politics. He accuses NY Times Democrat columnists of being social conservatives on the subject of education.

He disagrees [at 19:00] with teaching kids to be self-sufficient. He complains that this is a peculiar American cultural bias towards individualism, and is not shared elsewhere. Wanting self-sufficiency is more popular with men than women, with industrialized societies, with the Western world, and with professional classes.

In his leftist view, it is better to have everyone dependent on everyone else, so if your 30yo son is still living in your basement, that is a good thing, not a bad thing.

After hearing his politics, I don't trust him when he says that the research shows that some practice is better. After all, maybe it is only better from his leftist view.