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Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question never looked carefully at a standardized test.

Alfie Kohn

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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Test
Tests
Looked
Stupid
Question
Thing
Standardized
Never
Carefully
Whoever

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To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.
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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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We can't value only what is easy to measure measurable outcomes may be the least important results of learning.
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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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Educators remind us that what counts in a classroom is not what the teacher teaches it’s what the learner learns.
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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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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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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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Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.
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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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Educational success should be measured by how strong your desire is to keep learning.
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There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.
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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.
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If unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are present, praise isn't necessary. If they're absent, praise won't help.
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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.
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Punishments erode relationships and moral growth.
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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.
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When was the last time you spent the entire day with only 42 year olds?
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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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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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