Top Alfie Kohn Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Alfie Kohn Biography

Alfie Kohn (born October 15, 1957) is an American author and lecturer in the areas of education, parenting, and human behavior. He is a proponent of progressive education and has offered critiques of many traditional aspects of parenting, managing, and American society more generally, drawing in each case from social science research.

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Alfie Kohn Quotes

Social psychology has found the more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.

People, Psychology, Rewards, Tend, Interest

Children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions.

Children, Decision, Following, Learning, Making

Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe.

Play, Risk, Trying, Things, Individuals, Safe

Someone who thinks well of himself is said to have a healthy self-concept and is envied. Someone who thinks well of his country is called a patriot and is applauded. But someone who thinks well of his species is regarded as hopelessly naïve and is dismissed.

Country, Hopelessly, Naive, Self, Species, Thinking

If faculty would relax their emphasis on grades, this might serve not to lower standards but to encourage an orientation toward learning.

Encourage, Faculty, Lower, Might, Relax, Standards

Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.

Done, Educational, Learning, Students

Trying to do well and trying to beat others are two different things. Excellence and victory are conceptually distinct. . . and are experienced differently.

Two, Excellence, Victory, Beat, Experienced

Being a team player should not imply a demand for simple obedience and conformity.

Team, Simple, Player, Obedience, Demand

Most of us would protest that of course we love our children without any strings attached. But what counts is how things look from the perspective of the children

Children, Strings Attached, Perspective, Protest, Course

Standardized testing has swelled and mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole.

Creature, Horror, Like, School, Standardized Testing, Threatens

What is wrong with encouraging students to put "how well they're doing" ahead of "what they're doing. " An impressive and growing body of research suggests that this emphasis (1) undermines students' interest in learning, (2) makes failure seem overwhelming, (3) leads students to avoid challenging themselves, (4) reduces the quality of learning, and (5) invites students to think about how smart they are instead of how hard they tried.

Smart, Thinking, Challenges, Research, Challenging, Impressive

When we do things that are controlling, whether intentional or not, we are not going to get those long-term outcomes.

School, Long, Outcomes, Things, Controlling

There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.

Different, Kind, Matter, Matters, Motivation

Sometimes we have to put our foot down,. . . but before we deliberately make children unhappy in order to get them to get into the car, or to do their homework or whatever, we need to weigh whether what we're doing to make it happen is worth the possible strain on our relationship with them.

Children, Order, Feet, Deliberately, Worth, Car

The Legacy of Behaviorism: Do this and you'll get that.

Behaviorism, Legacy

To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.

Control, Curriculum, Force, Students

Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.

Education, People, Intelligence, Rewards, Motivate

Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.

School, Punishment, Two Sides, Punishments, Sides, Rewards

A preoccupation with achievement is not only different from, but often detrimental to, a focus on learning. Thoughts and emotions while performing an action are more important in determining subsequent engagement than the actual outcome of that action.

Focus, Achievement, Important, Emotions, Determining, Performing

Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.

Evaluation, Rating, Grades, Subjective, Objective

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