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If unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are present, praise isn't necessary. If they're absent, praise won't help.

Alfie Kohn

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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Necessary
Present
Help
Helping
Unconditional
Love
Absent
Enthusiasm
Genuine
Praise

More quotes by 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.
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Being a team player should not imply a demand for simple obedience and conformity.
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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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There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.
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In education, parody is obsolete.
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A preoccupation with achievement is not only different from, but often detrimental to, a focus on learning. Thoughts and emotions while performing an action are more important in determining subsequent engagement than the actual outcome of that action.
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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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Grades dilute the pleasure that a student experiences on successfully completing a task.
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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
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.
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Trying to be number one and trying to do a task well are two different things.
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If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow.
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