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When was the last time you spent the entire day with only 42 year olds?

Alfie Kohn

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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Lasts
Last
Years
Time
Olds
Spent
Entire
Year

More quotes by 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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Contrary to what you think, your company will be a lot more productive if you refuse to tolerate competition among your employees.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
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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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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Trying to do well and trying to beat others are two different things. Excellence and victory are conceptually distinct . . . and are experienced differently.
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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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.
Alfie Kohn
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Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe.
Alfie Kohn
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To feel controlled is to lose interest.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.
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.
Alfie Kohn
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To be well-educated is to have the desire as well as the means to make sure that learning never ends.
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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The race to win turns us all into losers.
Alfie Kohn
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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?
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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In education, parody is obsolete.
Alfie Kohn
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If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow.
Alfie Kohn