Failure as motivation to success

One of the key problems with education in the United States at the turn of the 21^st century is the increased focus on self-esteem as a driver of student performance without objective justification for the merits of such paradigm.  It had been correctly assumed as late as the early 1990s that self-esteem was related to better exam results, but the correlation between them was misinterpreted.  Students were made to feel good about themselves with the hopes that this would help them excel.

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It was discovered much later that the correlation, in fact, works in reverse.  While students should be encouraged to excel, artificially lowering the bar meant that they lost motivation to learn.  Moreover, denying children the learning experience gained from accepting failure curtailed development toward success.

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Handled correctly, failure can be used as a catalyst for future success.  Professionals such as Dr. Martin Seligman suggest that failure, if treated as isolated events that have specific causes, would encourage children to learn behaviors that would instead lead to success.  By treating failure not as something to be avoided but as a welcome challenge for further learning, students could top their current performance and be motivated to improve.

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As life is nothing without failure, children should learn to accept and learn from their mistakes as they grow and earn their sense of self-worth through their successes and through the failures they overcome.

Ken Von Kohorn is a Connecticut-based nonfiction sociopolitical writer who is deeply invested in the success and welfare of children. Visit this Twitter page for more updates on literature, education, and more.

Clandestine in Chile: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's nonfiction

When a Nobel Prize-winning novelist ventriloquises Chile’s prominent writer and filmmaker, the result is certainly a no blah-kind-of-reportage: it is eloquent in style, as though Garcia Marquez himself has put Miguel Littin’s shoes on during the years of his exile, as if Garcia Marquez and Littin are no different individuals—as though they bought braved the life outside Chile to plan on the fall of Pinochet.

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Garcia Marquez’s intentions are clear: he is writing Littin’s years of exile not just to highlight the benighted Chile in the hands of Pinochet and the United States but also to make Littin’s story as realistic as how really the filmmaker has lived his life outside the bosom of Latin America. The result: a first-person narrative of pure entertainment, desperation, and not-so-laughable realities that befall the filmmaker-turned-middle-aged caper and vainglorious artist.

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Clandestine in Chile is honest to its goal. It never disappoints and it is never more than picturesque as Garcia Marquez’s magic realist novels. It is pure reportage, as though magic, in its absence, has played well to make this short yarn dance gracefully. However, the real magic is in Garcia Marquez’s writing acumen, his keenness to unite the techniques he has used in novels with Miguel Littin’s unadulterated account of his self-imposed expiation to come up with a powerful book that could have awarded Garcia Marquez a separate Nobel award: The Peace Prize.

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Ken Von Kohorn is a nonfiction writer who writes on socio-political issues. This Twitter Page shows an elaborate account of his works.

Children’s books, and when they become more than children’s books

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To children, children’s books are just mere pieces of literature that tell stories of happy-ever-afters. Typically presented with flamboyant covers and with pages punctuated by colorful artwork, children’s books appear as though they were designed to accommodate the fledglings’ limited understanding.

But there is more to children’s books.

In a world that seems to be dominated by hi-tech video games and non-child-friendly TV shows, it has become even harder for parents to turn their children’s attention away from technology. In the 21st century, reading is still important, experts say, and parents must encourage their children to learn – and love -- reading.

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Children’s books, from picture books to young-adult fiction, are a good alternative to video games and TV shows. They can be a child’s personal guidance to morality, to becoming a good member of society. Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat tackles, in the simplest form, worldly and political themes, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 teaches about the importance of books and reading, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince delves into the allegory of the human condition, Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer tells of the quintessence of dreaming and ambition, and Louisa May Alcott’s The Little Women speaks of family and personal development. These are just some of the many book titles that can help develop a child’s imagination, creativity, and social behavior.

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It has been said time and again that reading is an essential element in a child’s formative years. Children’s books are more than just books – they serve as passageways to a child’s bright future.

A nonfiction writer, Ken Von Kohorn believes that literacy helps shape the future of America. Follow this Twitter account to know more about his advocacies.

REPOST: How To Get A Jumpstart On Your Philanthropy

Willa Seldon notes in her article for Forbes that “giving money away is easy.” However, “doing it right, so that you get more and better results over time, is hard.” Seldon is a partner in The Bridgespan Group’s San Francisco office, and coauthor of “High-Stakes Donor Collaboration,” which appears in the spring 2013 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. 

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Giving money away is easy. You just write a check or approve a grant proposal. But doing it right, so that you get more and better results over time, is hard. Newcomers to philanthropy often feel this tension most acutely. Many have good intensions that far outstrip their knowledge of the cause they choose to support.

If you fall into this category, take heart. You’re not alone. Philanthropy is deeply personal, which explains the profusion of US nonprofits supporting all sorts of worthwhile endeavors. Because philanthropy is deeply personal, it makes sense that funders invest broadly. But what about the portion of your philanthropy that is meant to be strategic? In such cases, flying solo often doesn’t lead to achieving the desired results.

As a newcomer with more passion for an issue than in-depth knowledge, the road to success can lead to working with like-minded philanthropists and foundations from whom you can learn. So before you invest time and money developing your own expertise in an area of interest, consider collaborating with other more experienced funders and learning from them. That’s a course charted by a funders’ collaborative called Oceans 5.

Launched in early 2011, Oceans 5 is dedicated to expanding marine reserves and constraining overfishing. The Oceans 5 founders wanted to bring in a variety of partners—whether or not they had marine expertise. In fact, one of Oceans 5’s objectives—and a key part of its long-term growth strategy—is to provide a forum for funders who lack expertise in ocean conservation but who want to learn from more experienced partners, like cofounder and Oak Foundation Chair Kristian Parker. He explains it this way: “Oceans 5 was an opportunity to reach out to less experienced foundations and philanthropists to share what we have learned in our 12-plus years of grantmaking in marine conservation. We hoped that for foundations that did not intend to hire specialized staff, Oceans 5 would provide a safe, well-informed platform from which to invest their philanthropic time and money.”

The group is comprised of five partners who commit at least $1 million annually for a minimum of three years and members who commit $200,000 a year. Board meetings give program director Chuck Fox, an experienced marine conservationist, an opportunity to review investment opportunities and present recommendations. “It’s been fantastic to watch these philanthropies come together, engage in deep dialogue around projects, and become far more strategic in their giving,” says Tracy Durning, a board member and cofounder.

For Addison Fischer, a board member and cofounder of Planet Heritage Foundation, the shared knowledge around the table and collective funding is critical to the success of the group. “As a smaller foundation with no ocean-specific expertise, we would not have been able to do this nearly as effectively on our own. So, from an investment standpoint, having a shared, high-level oceans program director in place is very beneficial in making far more strategic investments overall.”

Funder collaborations that share specialized information aren’t just for newcomers to philanthropy. They work for large, established foundations as well. The Energy Foundation is a case in point.

Launched in 1991, the Energy Foundation today is the largest philanthropic funder of nonprofits working on energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. It was started as a joint initiative of three newly appointed foundation presidents, Peter Goldmark of the Rockefeller Foundation, Rebecca Rimel of the Pew Charitable Trusts, and Adele Simmons of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. At the time, none of the foundations had an energy program. As Rimel recalls: “We were convinced that this could lead to a different model of grantmaking. At that time, people talked a lot about collaboration, and we thought ‘let’s just do it.’”

Recognizing their organizations’ limited knowledge in the energy arena, the three foundation presidents hired a recognized authority, Hal Harvey, to help identify a workable approach to boosting clean energy development. After months of research, Harvey and his team developed a business plan to launch the Energy Foundation as a grantmaker and advocate for change in the field. The three founding organizations collectively granted $100 million for the project over 10 years. The joint investment allowed the funders to share specialized expertise rather than pursue a similar path on their own.

A decade on, a second wave of funders, including the Hewlett Foundation, joined the collaborative—in large part persuaded by the expertise and platform that the Energy Foundation had developed. As Hewlett vice president Susan Bell explains, “If we wanted to make a difference on the issue, we would have had to staff up to do that, and the Energy Foundation allowed us not to. They served as our program staff and could navigate among existing organizations that needed funding.”

In effect, large and small foundations today can outsource all or parts of their energy programs to the Energy Foundation. Along the way, the foundation has grown in size, financial clout, and ambition. Working through grantees, it has had significant impact on promoting adoption of state and federal vehicle efficiency standards, more stringent residential and commercial building codes to reduce energy consumption, and development of renewable energy technology. In 2011 alone, the Energy Foundation made 592 grants to 347 groups, totaling $76.2 million.

Oceans 5 and the Energy Foundation are variations on a theme: collaboration is a great way for philanthropists and foundations—new and experienced—to share specialized knowledge and accomplish more together than acting separately. At a time when many of society’s problems are too big to tackle alone and with limited resources, donors can accomplish more together than apart. It’s a compelling way to jumpstart your philanthropy.

Ken Von Kohorn is an active member of the non-profit organization Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Like this Facebook page for timely updates on philanthropy.

Cherishing the few good things left in American politics

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One great quality that Americans possess that they themselves barely notice and give importance to is their behavior towards politics. In the southeast region of Asia, in the Philippines, the Filipinos are envious of how American politicians react before, during, and after the election. According to them, America’s politics is an exemplary model that their country should start emulating.

Unlike in other democratic countries, American politicians know how to concede and accept defeat. In spite of the close fight and the pre-written victory speech in his hands, Mitt Romney still managed to brave the stage to publicly concede to the incumbent president and, the most moving part is, the trodden challenger even promised to support Obama’s plans for the country.


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Countries outside North America also admire how elections are done in the States. In the US, candidates only focus on their opponents’ platforms and not on their personal lives—whereas the precise opposite occur in Thailand, in Indonesia, or in the Philippines wherein lambasting the adversary’s personal life is a staple political stance to move up and improve in the electoral ratings or to gain public sympathy. It rarely happens in the States, for politics here is always “platform versus policy” and never “policy against lifestyle.” But the dismaying thought is that Americans seem to have no time looking at the few good things that are left in their country.


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For more insights and updates from Ken Von Kohorn, follow this Twitter account.

What difference does it make? The school systems outside America

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Most modern school systems that exist today were modeled by their respective countries from the systems of the West, from the present superpowers at the time they’ve begun reforming their old systems. For instance, Japan’s is borrowed heavily from the German and French educational systems, as these two countries were among those that had the soundest economy during 1868 when the Japanese government expressed its intention of catching up with the Western standards of living. In the Philippines, conversely, the present-day educational system has traces of both American and Spanish methods, since the country has experienced massive educational reforms during the years of being occupied by the aforesaid western nations.

Even though Western education seems to be the dominant educational system in the world, does it mean that it is the best?

Sadly, the answer is a big “no.”

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In France, the revolution has gone down to the ground level, as the teachers themselves revolt the “elitist” way by softening the iron-fist method that highlights the French way of teaching and by focusing more on the students’ skills and not on the absence of variation found in all French classrooms that continuously kills the system. In Germany, however, the quandary lies on the entangled policies due to the difference in educational standards per state, since it is not controlled entirely by the central government but administered by the states. Here in America, everyone is aware of the unending clamor for more accessible education despite the big budget allocation the government has given to the education sector. Thus, every country seems to have its own problem of overhauling its current education system.

Moreover, many Westerners pursue their education abroad.

If they travel ashore just to get the cheap and quality education they want, does this mean that the education back in their homeland is not only unattainably expensive but also poor in quality? Does this also mean that the system that was only borrowed from the West has finally overtaken the standards and quality of its foundation?

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So what’s now in store for the American education?

Besides being a businessman, Ken von Kohorn is a passionate leader at The Family Institute of Connecticut, an educational nonprofit that targets families and children with the intention of imparting cultural, religious, and educational values. Follow this Facebook page to learn more about his endeavors and advocacies.

REPOST: Gifted, Talented and Separated

This article published in The New York Times explores how students in a school in New York City are divided by the gifted label--and race.

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IT is just a metal door with three windows, the kind meant to keep the clamor of an elementary school hallway from piercing a classroom’s quiet. Other than paint the color of bubble gum, it is unremarkable.
But the pink door on Room 311 at Public School 163 on the Upper West Side represents a barrier belied by its friendly hue. On one side are 21 fourth graders labeled gifted and talented by New York City’s school system. They are coursing through public school careers stamped accelerated.

And they are mostly white.

On the other side, sometimes sitting for reading lessons on the floor of the hallway, are those in the school’s vast majority: They are enrolled in general or special education programs.

They are mostly children of color.

“I know what we look like,” Carolyn M. Weinberg, a 28-year veteran of P.S. 163, said of the racial disparities as she stood one day in the third-floor hallway between Room 318, where she and a colleague teach a fourth-grade general education class, and the one where Angelo Monserrate teaches the gifted class, Room 311.

“I know what you see,” said Ms. Weinberg.

There are 652 students enrolled at P.S. 163 this year, from prekindergarten through fifth grade. Roughly 63 percent of them are black and Hispanic; whites make up 27 percent; and Asians account for 6 percent.

This reflects the flavor of the neighborhood, and roughly matches the New York City school system’s overall demographics.

Yet in P.S. 163’s gifted classes, the racial dynamics of the neighborhood, the school itself and the school system are turned upside down.

Of the 205 children enrolled in the nine gifted classes, 97, or 47 percent, are white; another 31 of the students, or 15 percent, are Asian. And a combined 65 students, or 32 percent, are black and Hispanic.

In the 21 other classes that enroll the school’s remaining 447 students, only 80, or 18 percent, are white.

The disparities are most apparent in the lower grades.

Of the 24 students in Karen Engler’s kindergarten gifted class, one is black and three are Hispanic. Ayelet Cutler’s first-grade gifted class has 21 students, one of them black and two Hispanic. There are two blacks and two Hispanics among the 26 students in Athena Shapiro’s second-grade gifted class.

On a recent morning, a line of Ms. Cutler’s students moved from the classroom to the corridor, ahead of the general education class of Linda Crews. A string of mostly white faces and then a line of mostly black and Hispanic ones walked down the hall of a school named for a New York politician who sought to end inequities in education: Alfred E. Smith.

It was 11:25 a.m., and the classes wound their way to the cafeteria, a cavernous room at the school’s western edge. Once there, the children sat with those in their own class, each one at a separate long white table that, for a moment, froze the divisions.

For critics of New York City’s gifted and talented programs, that image crystallizes what they say is a flawed system that reinforces racial separation in the city’s schools and contributes to disparities in achievement.

They contend that gifted admissions standards favor middle-class children, many of them white or Asian, over black and Hispanic children who might have equal promise, and that the programs create castes within schools, one offered an education that is enriched and accelerated, the other getting a bare-bones version of the material. Because they are often embedded within larger schools, the programs bolster a false vision of diversity, these critics say, while reinforcing the negative stereotypes of class and race.

Despite months of repeated requests, the city’s Education Department would not provide racial breakdowns of gifted and talented programs and the schools that house them. But the programs tend to be in wealthier districts whose populations have fewer black and Hispanic children, and far more children qualify for them in affluent districts than in poorer ones.

For the full version of the Times article, click here.

Through writing, Ken Von Kohorn campaigns for academic excellence in the country.   Learn more about his works and advocacies from this Facebook page.

How to bring our schools out of the 20th Century

By Claudia Wallis and Sonja Steptoe 
Read the full article here.

There's a dark little joke exchanged by educators with a dissident streak: Rip Van Winkle awakens in the 21st century after a hundred-year snooze and is, of course, utterly bewildered by what he sees. Men and women dash about, talking to small metal devices pinned to their ears. Young people sit at home on sofas, moving miniature athletes around on electronic screens. Older folk defy death and disability with metronomes in their chests and with hips made of metal and plastic. Airports, hospitals, shopping malls--every place Rip goes just baffles him. But when he finally walks into a schoolroom, the old man knows exactly where he is. "This is a school," he declares. "We used to have these back in 1906. Only now the blackboards are green."

American schools aren't exactly frozen in time, but considering the pace of change in other areas of life, our public schools tend to feel like throwbacks. Kids spend much of the day as their great-grandparents once did: sitting in rows, listening to teachers lecture, scribbling notes by hand, reading from textbooks that are out of date by the time they are printed. A yawning chasm (with an emphasis on yawning) separates the world inside the schoolhouse from the world outside.

For the past five years, the national conversation on education has focused on reading scores, math tests and closing the "achievement gap" between social classes. This is not a story about that conversation. This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about education, the one that will ultimately determine not merely whether some fraction of our children get "left behind" but also whether an entire generation of kids will fail to make the grade in the global economy because they can't think their way through abstract problems, work in teams, distinguish good information from bad or speak a language other than English.

This week the conversation will burst onto the front page, when the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, a high-powered, bipartisan assembly of Education Secretaries and business, government and other education leaders releases a blueprint for rethinking American education from pre-K to 12 and beyond to better prepare students to thrive in the global economy. While that report includes some controversial proposals, there is nonetheless a remarkable consensus among educators and business and policy leaders on one key conclusion: we need to bring what we teach and how we teach into the 21st century.

Right now we're aiming too low. Competency in reading and math--the focus of so much No Child Left Behind (NCLB) testing--is the meager minimum. Scientific and technical skills are, likewise, utterly necessary but insufficient. Today's economy demands not only a high-level competence in the traditional academic disciplines but also what might be called 21st century skills. Here's what they are:

Knowing more about the world. Kids are global citizens now, even in small-town America, and they must learn to act that way. Mike Eskew, CEO of UPS, talks about needing workers who are "global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages"--not exactly strong points in the U.S., where fewer than half of high school students are enrolled in a foreign-language class and where the social-studies curriculum tends to fixate on U.S. history.