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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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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Dangerous
Incentive
Individual
Incentives
Individuals
Play
Bunch
Trying
Management
Things
Driven
Safe
Risk

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Standardized testing has swelled and mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole.
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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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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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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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Being a team player should not imply a demand for simple obedience and conformity.
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The Legacy of Behaviorism: Do this and you'll get that.
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If rewards do not work, what does? I recommend that employers pay workers well and fairly and then do everything possible to help them forget about money. A preoccupation with money distracts everyone - employers and employees - from the issues that really matter.
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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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To feel controlled is to lose interest.
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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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When was the last time you spent the entire day with only 42 year olds?
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The race to win turns us all into losers.
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Children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions.
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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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Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question never looked carefully at a standardized test.
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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.
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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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Educators remind us that what counts in a classroom is not what the teacher teaches it’s what the learner learns.
Alfie Kohn
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Educational success should be measured by how strong your desire is to keep learning.
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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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