Quote

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.

Alfie Kohn

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Live
Trained
Students
Grow
Democracy
Grows
Chance
Today

More quotes by Alfie Kohn

Image
Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Being a team player should not imply a demand for simple obedience and conformity.
Alfie Kohn
Image
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
Image
Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.
Alfie Kohn
Image
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
Image
Punishments erode relationships and moral growth.
Alfie Kohn
Image
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.
Alfie Kohn
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Educational success should be measured by how strong your desire is to keep learning.
Alfie Kohn
Image
If a child is off-task...mayb e the problem is not the child...maybe it's the task.
Alfie Kohn
Image
The value of a book about dealing with children is inversely proportional to the number of times it contains the word behavior.
Alfie Kohn
Image
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
Image
What can we surmise about the likelihood of someone's being caring and generous, loving and helpful, just from knowing that they are a believer? Virtually nothing, say psychologists, sociologists, and others who have studied that question for decade
Alfie Kohn
Image
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
Image
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
Image
When was the last time you spent the entire day with only 42 year olds?
Alfie Kohn
Image
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
Alfie Kohn
Image
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