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

Alfie Kohn

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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Learning
Decision
Learn
Making
Children
Make
Directions
Good
Decisions
Following

More quotes by Alfie Kohn

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We have so much to cover and so little time to cover it. Howard Gardner refers to curriculum coverage as the single greatest enemy of understanding. Think instead about ideas to be discovered.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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Don't let anyone tell you that standardized tests are not accurate measures. The truth of the matter is they offer a remarkably precise method for gauging the size of the houses near the school where the test was administered.
Alfie Kohn
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Saying you taught it but the student didn't learn it is like saying you sold it but the customer didn't buy it.
Alfie Kohn
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If faculty would relax their emphasis on grades, this might serve not to lower standards but to encourage an orientation toward learning.
Alfie Kohn
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The late W. Edwards Deming, guru of Quality management, once declared, 'The most important things we need to manage can't be measured.' If that’s true of what we need to manage, it should be even more obvious that it’s true of what we need to teach.
Alfie Kohn
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In education, parody is obsolete.
Alfie Kohn
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Students should not only be trained to live in a democracy when they grow up they should have the chance to live in one today.
Alfie Kohn
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If a child is off-task...mayb e the problem is not the child...maybe it's the task.
Alfie Kohn
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Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously.
Alfie Kohn
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Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.
Alfie Kohn
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Each time I visit such a classroom, where the teacher is more interested in creating a democratic community than in maintaining her position of authority, I’m convinced all over again that moving away from consequences and rewards isn’t just realistic - it’s the best way to help kids grow into good learners and good people.
Alfie Kohn
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Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question never looked carefully at a standardized test.
Alfie Kohn
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The race to win turns us all into losers.
Alfie Kohn
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We learn most readily, most naturally, most effectively, when we start with the big picture - precisely when the basics don't come first.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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Unconditional parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason.
Alfie Kohn
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How we feel about our kids isn't as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them.
Alfie Kohn
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Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn