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If a child is off-task...mayb e the problem is not the child...maybe it's the task.

Alfie Kohn

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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Problem
Children
Task
Tasks
Maybe
Child

More quotes by Alfie Kohn

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In education, parody is obsolete.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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
Alfie Kohn
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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
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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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Punishments erode relationships and moral growth.
Alfie Kohn
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Maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty.
Alfie Kohn
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What can we surmise about the likelihood of someone's being caring and generous, loving and helpful, just from knowing that they are a believer? Virtually nothing, say psychologists, sociologists, and others who have studied that question for decade
Alfie Kohn
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To feel controlled is to lose interest.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.
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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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.
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.
Alfie Kohn
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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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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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In outstanding classrooms, teachers do more listening than talking, and students do more talking than listening. Terrific teachers often have teeth marks on their tongues.
Alfie Kohn
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There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.
Alfie Kohn