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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

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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Lose
Loses
Energy
Others
Best
Trying
Fearing
Make
Energies
Spending

More quotes by 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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Saying you taught it but the student didn't learn it is like saying you sold it but the customer didn't buy it.
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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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Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.
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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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To feel controlled is to lose interest.
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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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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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Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question never looked carefully at a standardized test.
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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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Independence is useful, but caring attitudes and behaviors shrivel up in a culture where each person is responsible only for himself.
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Maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty.
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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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Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.
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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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The value of a book about dealing with children is inversely proportional to the number of times it contains the word behavior.
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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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Trying to be number one and trying to do a task well are two different things.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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The Legacy of Behaviorism: Do this and you'll get that.
Alfie Kohn