Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Wells
Regarded
Well
Concept
Self
Thinks
Country
Concepts
Applauded
Thinking
Species
Dismissed
Healthy
Hopelessly
Called
Envied
Someone
Patriot

More quotes by Alfie Kohn

Image
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
Image
To be well-educated is to have the desire as well as the means to make sure that learning never ends.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Educational success should be measured by how strong your desire is to keep learning.
Alfie Kohn
Image
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
Image
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
Image
When was the last time you spent the entire day with only 42 year olds?
Alfie Kohn
Image
Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.
Alfie Kohn
Image
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
Image
The overwhelming number of teachers ...are unable to name or describe a theory of learning that underlies what they do.
Alfie Kohn
Image
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
Alfie Kohn
Image
Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Being a team player should not imply a demand for simple obedience and conformity.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Trying to be number one and trying to do a task well are two different things.
Alfie Kohn
Image
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
Image
Independence is useful, but caring attitudes and behaviors shrivel up in a culture where each person is responsible only for himself.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Students should not only be trained to live in a democracy when they grow up they should have the chance to live in one today.
Alfie Kohn
Image
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
Image
Educators remind us that what counts in a classroom is not what the teacher teaches it’s what the learner learns.
Alfie Kohn
Image
When we do things that are controlling, whether intentional or not, we are not going to get those long-term outcomes.
Alfie Kohn
Image
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.
Alfie Kohn