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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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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Whose
Rights
Taken
Adoption
Making
Current
Must
Currents
Children
Seriously
Needs
Experiences
People
Adults

More quotes by Alfie Kohn

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In a word, learning is decontextualized. We break ideas down into tiny pieces that bear no relation to the whole. We give students a brick of information, followed by another brick, followed by another brick, until they are graduated, at which point we assume they have a house. What they have is a pile of bricks, and they don't have it for long.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
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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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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Educators remind us that what counts in a classroom is not what the teacher teaches it’s what the learner learns.
Alfie Kohn
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To feel controlled is to lose interest.
Alfie Kohn
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There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.
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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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
Alfie Kohn
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In outstanding classrooms, teachers do more listening than talking, and students do more talking than listening. Terrific teachers often have teeth marks on their tongues.
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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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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Trying to be number one and trying to do a task well are two different things.
Alfie Kohn
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The Legacy of Behaviorism: Do this and you'll get that.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
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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The overwhelming number of teachers ...are unable to name or describe a theory of learning that underlies what they do.
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