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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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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Book
Dealing
Children
Behavior
Number
Value
Numbers
Word
Inversely
Values
Proportional
Times
Contains

More quotes by Alfie Kohn

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When we do things that are controlling, whether intentional or not, we are not going to get those long-term outcomes.
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There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.
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To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.
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Unconditional parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason.
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If unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are present, praise isn't necessary. If they're absent, praise won't help.
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John Dewey reminded us that the value of what students do 'resides in its connection with a stimulation of greater thoughtfulness, not in the greater strain it imposes.
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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.
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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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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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The overwhelming number of teachers ...are unable to name or describe a theory of learning that underlies what they do.
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Punishment and reward proceed from basically the same psychological model, one that conceives of motivation as nothing more than the manipulation of behavior.
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Educational success should be measured by how strong your desire is to keep learning.
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Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.
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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.
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If a child is off-task...mayb e the problem is not the child...maybe it's the task.
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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.
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In education, parody is obsolete.
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When test scores go up, we should worry, because of how poor a measure they are of what matters, and what you typically sacrifice in a desperate effort to raise scores.
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Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.
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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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