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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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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Punishment
Rewards
Sides
Doesn
Two
School
Punishments
Much
Coin
Coins

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You have to give them unconditional love. They need to know that even if they screw up, you love them. You don't want them to grow up and resent you or, even worse, parent the way you parented them.
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Being a team player should not imply a demand for simple obedience and conformity.
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The Legacy of Behaviorism: Do this and you'll get that.
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Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.
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Contrary to what you think, your company will be a lot more productive if you refuse to tolerate competition among your employees.
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If I offered you a thousand dollars to take off your shoes, you'd very likely accept--and then I could triumphantly announce that 'rewards work.' But as with punishments, they can never help someone develop a *commitment* to a task or action, a reason to keep doing it when there's no longer a payoff.
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If rewards do not work, what does? I recommend that employers pay workers well and fairly and then do everything possible to help them forget about money. A preoccupation with money distracts everyone - employers and employees - from the issues that really matter.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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People will typically be more enthusiastic where they feel a sense of belonging and see themselves as part of a community than they will in a workplace in which each person is left to his own devices
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How can we do our best when we are spending our energies trying to make others lose - and fearing that they will make us lose?
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Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.
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Those who know they're valued irrespective of their accomplishments often end up accomplishing quite a lot. It's the experience of being accepted without conditions that helps people develop a healthy confidence in themselves, a belief that it's safe to take risks and try new things.
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Trying to do well and trying to beat others are two different things. Excellence and victory are conceptually distinct . . . and are experienced differently.
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The value of a book about dealing with children is inversely proportional to the number of times it contains the word behavior.
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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.
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Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe.
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We can't value only what is easy to measure measurable outcomes may be the least important results of learning.
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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.
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