Quote

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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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Order
Car
Happens
Worth
Need
Relationship
Weigh
Sometimes
Feet
Homework
Children
Happen
Deliberately
Needs
Possible
Strain
Make
Whatever
Foot
Whether
Unhappy

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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.
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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.
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Unconditional parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason.
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Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question never looked carefully at a standardized test.
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When was the last time you spent the entire day with only 42 year olds?
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There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.
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Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.
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In education, parody is obsolete.
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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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If a child is off-task...mayb e the problem is not the child...maybe it's the task.
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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.
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To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.
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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.
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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.
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The race to win turns us all into losers.
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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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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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Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.
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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?
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