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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
Energy
Others
Best
Trying
Fearing
Make
Energies
Spending
Lose
Loses

More quotes by Alfie Kohn

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Punishments erode relationships and moral growth.
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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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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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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.
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You have to give them unconditional love. They need to know that even if they screw up, you love them. You don't want them to grow up and resent you or, even worse, parent the way you parented them.
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The race to win turns us all into losers.
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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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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.
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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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There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.
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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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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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Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.
Alfie Kohn
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Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.
Alfie Kohn
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Each time I visit such a classroom, where the teacher is more interested in creating a democratic community than in maintaining her position of authority, I’m convinced all over again that moving away from consequences and rewards isn’t just realistic - it’s the best way to help kids grow into good learners and good people.
Alfie Kohn
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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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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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Those who know they're valued irrespective of their accomplishments often end up accomplishing quite a lot. It's the experience of being accepted without conditions that helps people develop a healthy confidence in themselves, a belief that it's safe to take risks and try new things.
Alfie Kohn