Deborah Kenny, Ph.D., has been teaching kids to care about their impact on the world, hold themselves accountable, reason, and discern for over two decades via the Harlem Village Academies and the Deeper Learning Institute, both of which she founded. "This is what I wanted for my own children. It is what I believe all children deserve," Dr. Kenny says of the values her methods emphasize.
These teachings matter more now than ever. As AI threatens to devalue hard work and misinformation undermines our sense of reality, the techniques Dr. Kenny has developed can be applied directly to the challenges educators face today to help mold "well-educated" children.
We spoke to Dr. Kenny about her recent New York Times bestselling book, The Well-Educated Child, to better understand what qualifies as "well-educated," how to get kids to read, and how educators can prevent the misuse of AI in the classroom.
Katie Couric Media: You write that many kids today are "well-schooled" but not necessarily "well-educated." What's the difference, and where do you think modern parenting culture fits into that gap?
Dr. Deborah Kenny: This is a great question. The reality in most school systems in America today is that students are confronted with a deeply flawed system of credits, extra credit, and class ranking that compels them into a kind of gamesmanship. They're compelled to focus on what will count for credit, to raise their hands to appear interested, to curry favor with teachers, to study only what will be on the test, to take shortcuts to get good grades, and to contest grades. These practices have serious implications. I have heard students talk about reading not in terms of ideas, knowledge, or the beauty of the literature, but as a thing you do to get a score.
After 13 years steeped in this mindset, students become conditioned to see scores and prizes as the sine qua non of educational achievement. They cannot help but care more about grades than the sophistication of their own thinking, more about awards than knowledge, more about class rank than discovering the mysteries of the universe. That is what it means to be well-schooled.
To be well-educated is something else entirely. Well-educated students can reason independently, understand ideas deeply, and evaluate information critically. They're self-directed and self-motivated. Students who are well-educated are too astute to be duped by misinformation; they're independent-minded but not irrational, confident but not arrogant, and spirited but civil in discourse. They're kind, happy, and considerate of others, not self-centered and stressed. They've cultivated an appreciation for the beauty of art, music, and math. They're knowledgeable and well-read but have the humility to know how much they don’t know.
Well-educated students are intellectually curious, driven, and self-directed. They're interesting and interested. They are independent thinkers who are too savvy to be deceived. Their reaction when they encounter new information is to assume there is more to the issue. They are kindhearted and attentive to the greater good, with a generous spirit and a strong moral sensibility.
All this is what I wanted for my own children. It is what I believe all children deserve.
One of the most striking ideas in the book is that curiosity, joy, beauty, and rigor can coexist in education. Why do you think so many schools, and even so many adults, treat educational rigor and joy as opposites?
As the founding principal of our first school, I told our teachers that our goal was to have students love reading. Not to earn points or prizes for reading, but to become genuinely avid readers. We created inviting classroom libraries stocked with high-quality books. We let students choose what they read. We learned about their personal interests so we could recommend books on those topics. We taught them to write book recommendations and lead book talks for their classmates. We read the first pages of great books aloud to hook them. Reading became a whole-school project. Students who had previously read one or two books a year were now reading fifty. The idea that students are reading 50 books a year is ambitious and rigorous, but it can be achieved in a way that fosters joy and intellectual curiosity.
And what does emotional nourishment in a school actually look like, in practice?
The essential aspect of emotional nourishment is community. I spent my childhood summers at a camp where the atmosphere was warm, welcoming, friendly, and loving. There were all kinds of kids, but no cliques, so everyone felt they belonged. We were taught to be accepting and kind to one another. We were taught to think of ourselves as — to use one of our favorite words — a community. During free periods, we went for long walks, talking for hours about our innermost feelings. That intellectual camaraderie, the emotional intimacy, it all made us feel a deep kinship with one another. When I founded our schools, the camp was a model for a culture of caring in which children feel a deep sense of belonging and love.
Your vision of a "well-educated child" goes far beyond grades and test scores. What are the qualities you most hope that students carry into adulthood?
I had five core things in mind when I was raising my own kids, and that’s what I want for all children. I wanted my kids to be wholesome. I wanted them to be compassionate and to see life as a responsibility to give something to the world. I wanted them to have a sophisticated intellect. I wanted them to be avid readers, the kind of person who always has trouble putting a book down. And I raised them to be independent thinkers who lead reflective, meaningful lives.
In the book, I describe three categories that represent what I hope students will carry into adulthood: quality thinking, agency, and ethical purpose.
Quality thinking includes independent thinking, analysis, problem solving, communication, persuasion, innovative thinking, and intellectual curiosity.
Agency includes taking initiative, caring about the quality of one’s work, putting in maximum effort with sustained focus, resourcefulness, and persistence.
Ethical purpose means that students develop a sense of purpose based on an ethical outlook. They recognize what Viktor Frankl said, that “life is asking something” of us, and they want to use their lives to contribute in some way to society. They understand that their lives can be meaningful. These are the ideas that shape a life.
A student who has learned to take ownership of their own learning, to set goals, to persist through difficulty, to figure things out when the script runs out, is a student who can use AI without being diminished by it.
There's a real hunger among parents right now for kids to become more resilient, independent, and self-directed, especially after the pandemic and the rise of AI. Do you think schools are helping cultivate those traits, or accidentally weakening them?
AI raises the stakes of this question considerably. If a student is well-educated, AI is a powerful tool in their hands. If a student is not, AI can be damaging to the child and to society.
Students should not be using AI for their writing assignments. Writing (along with discourse) is how one develops and sharpens one’s thinking. We need students to spend real time writing in school. We need them to be intrinsically motivated to become great thinkers and writers. And we need to restructure assessments so that students write by hand and orally defend their ideas. AI can be taught as a tool. Students need to understand it. But it cannot be a substitute for doing the intellectual work themselves.
This is also where agency becomes essential. A student who has learned to take ownership of their own learning, to set goals, to persist through difficulty, to figure things out when the script runs out, is a student who can use AI without being diminished by it. Agency is the precondition for everything else and must be deliberately fostered through structures that encourage young people to take ownership of their schoolwork.
What do you hope adults, not just educators, take away from this book about how we shape young people?
I hope adults take away a renewed sense of how much is at stake in a child's inner life. I also hope they will benefit from the lessons we learned over decades of working with young people.
American culture and social media bombard children daily with messages about money, possessions, glamour, status, and celebrity. Some schools now even advise students to “develop your brand”. Have we so completely lost our compass that we would encourage children to see themselves not as souls to be refined but as brands to be promoted, to regard their lives in the most trivial way possible? That is a question for every adult in a child's life.
Parents and educators need to help young people develop a sense of purpose. Not a college major or a career path, but a calling. A defining vision for one's life. When students develop a sense of purpose in school, it eventually carries over into their lives. They begin to ask what kind of person they want to be, what their unique contribution to the world might look like.
