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The race to win turns us all into losers.

Alfie Kohn

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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Losers
Loser
Winning
Race
Turns

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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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Maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty.
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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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In education, parody is obsolete.
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Educational success should be measured by how strong your desire is to keep learning.
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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.
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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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If faculty would relax their emphasis on grades, this might serve not to lower standards but to encourage an orientation toward learning.
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Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.
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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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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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
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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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We can't value only what is easy to measure measurable outcomes may be the least important results of learning.
Alfie Kohn
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If unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are present, praise isn't necessary. If they're absent, praise won't help.
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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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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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