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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.

Alfie Kohn

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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Pay
Recommend
Doe
Issues
Employers
Wells
Employees
Everything
Possible
Fairly
Well
Forget
Employee
Matter
Help
Rewards
Work
Everyone
Workers
Distracts
Really
Helping
Financial
Preoccupation
Money

More quotes by Alfie Kohn

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Educational success should be measured by how strong your desire is to keep learning.
Alfie Kohn
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Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.
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.
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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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We can't value only what is easy to measure measurable outcomes may be the least important results of learning.
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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To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.
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To feel controlled is to lose interest.
Alfie Kohn
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Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.
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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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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Children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions.
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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Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question never looked carefully at a standardized test.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn