Iced-Cream Alfie Kohn Analysis

Alfie Kohn’s “How Not to Get into College”, and Daniel Barwick’s “Enjoying the so-called “Iced-cream”” express through both real and fictional problems that the dependency placed on exterior sources for happiness serves only to result in false self-fulfillment and temporary happiness. Kohn exhibits this through the mentally draining process of a student’s pathway to success. In his essay, he explains that the overwhelming pressure that students place on grades only to get in to College is not the end of the battle. As Kohn says, “The horizon never comes any closer…working harder, nose stuck into the future, ever more frantic…to discover that their lives were mostly gone” (Kohn, paragraph 9). Similarly, through Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, Barwick