Using Kohn To Challenge Perceptions About Millennials

Sarah Sklar, Psychology & Studio Art, ‘19

For this project, I read Alfie Kohn's The Myth of the Spoiled Child and learned about the widely spread misconceptions about our generation which affected how we were treated by our parents at home, and our teachers in the classroom. My final project consisted of a drawn and painted poster which I used to challenge the false ideas put forth by 
psychologist Jean Twenge in 2006.

In our educational psychology class, we read Punished By Rewards, a book by Alfie Kohn in which
he addresses why teachers should refrain from using systems of rewards in a classroom setting.

This book illustrated how rewards promote extrinsic learning in the form of praise from a teacher,
social approbation, and tangible treats while diminishing any motivation for intrinsic learning. After
our class discussion and first self - directed learning projects, I wanted to read more about Kohn’s
thoughts for improving education. For my first self directed learning project, I read another book by
Alfie Kohn entitled The Myth of the Spoiled Child.

In this book, Kohn addresses misconceptions about modern children who are constantly labeled
by older generations as controlling of their permissive parents and teachers. The book was
written in 2014 and a lot of the research is actually about our generation and how we grew up
with our relations to our parents and teachers. Kohn’s argument is that we as children were
never any more controlling or demanding than children of other generations, but that once
these conceptions became widely believed, parents were so afraid to be labeled as “permissive”
that they adopted an authoritarian position.

As we talked about earlier in the semester, when adults become too stringent with their children,
those children act out more because they do not know how to problem-solve for themselves
socially or emotionally. One of the psychologists to whom Kohn attributes the start of the
“permissive parent” scare is psychologist Jean Twenge. In the early 2000’s Twenge published
research articles labeling millennials as lower in empathy and higher in narcissism than children
of any generation before them. Twenge conducted experimental studies to support her data and
blamed parents of millennials for being too lenient.

In reality, however, the parents she labeled as permissive were really just demonstrating a
basic level of respect for their kids, addressing their questions and encourage them to think
critically for themselves. On top of that, members of older generations have regarded members
of younger generations in a condescending manner for decades. For instance, the baby
boomers commonly claimed that the children of generation X as lazy and unmotivated.
Additionally, anyone who has seen the NPI, which is used to measure narcissism knows
that the scale measures maladaptive attributes like conceitedness, but it also measures
healthy qualities like strong leadership skills. So, high levels on this index doesn’t necessarily
mean someone is arrogant. If anything, her results really showed that modern young girls are
more confident than they have been in the past. She also combined measures to cherry pick the
data she wanted, which did not yield accurate results. But, by the time psychological
researchers challenged her results, the misconceptions were already widespread and the
damage was done.

For the evaluative aspect of this project, I wanted to create something visual, rather than
something in the form of a writing piece. My motivation for this came about because we
talked in class about how every student expresses their knowledge best in vastly different
ways. Seeing as my two majors are psychology and studio art, I wanted to see how well I
could combine these two academic fields and create something other students and I would
find visually stimulating. After much deliberation, I chose to create a poster using an array of
graphite pencils and water color paints. For the subject matter, I wanted to use content
relevant primarily to our generation to allude to the quintessential millennial childhood.
I thought a lot about the phrases I could use from Jean Twenge’s research and how I could
combine it in a clever way to create my main visual message.

I began the art process by combing through advertisements and commercials for products
popular in the 1990’s and targeted primarily for children or teenagers. Some of the products I
considered using consisted of popular breakfast cereals like Trix, toys like the Bop It!, and
candies like the Baby Bottle Pop. I ultimately landed on the Loreal children’s shampoo, a
product which commonly appeared with the words “no more tears” accompanying it. The
idea behind this slogan was that the shampoo was made for children with the understanding
that kids do not have the control over their motor functions to avoid getting hair product in their
eyes when bathing or showering. Therefore, this shampoo was made with the intention of
protecting sensitive eyes from irritation by not stinging or causing redness.

After deciding what my advertisement poster would feature, I looked for reference photos of
vintage advertisements with designs that I liked. I wanted to juxtapose the fairly modern
products with a vintage style to symbolize the wide generational divide Kohn discusses in his
book. Finally, I added the citation to Jean Twenge's 2006 book Generation Me: Why
Today’s Kids Are More Confident, Entitled, Assertive, and Miserable Than Ever
Before (preview her book for yourself!). I positioned this under a drawing I made of a
still from an early 2000's commercial for Loreal Kids shampoo which featured two
young kids laughing with each other. Next to the product logo, I wrote their famous
phrase "No Tears!" and then added ironically "Because millennials cannot
empathize".