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Maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty.

Alfie Kohn

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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Difficulty
Optimal
Maximum

More quotes by Alfie Kohn

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In education, parody is obsolete.
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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Educational success should be measured by how strong your desire is to keep learning.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
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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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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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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If faculty would relax their emphasis on grades, this might serve not to lower standards but to encourage an orientation toward learning.
Alfie Kohn
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Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.
Alfie Kohn
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Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.
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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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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Being a team player should not imply a demand for simple obedience and conformity.
Alfie Kohn
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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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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
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Contrary to what you think, your company will be a lot more productive if you refuse to tolerate competition among your employees.
Alfie Kohn
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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
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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