Quote

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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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Thinking
Enemy
Howard
Understanding
Curriculum
Littles
Coverage
Ideas
Cover
Little
Discovered
Much
Instead
Time
Single
Gardner
Think
Greatest
Refers

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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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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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In education, parody is obsolete.
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Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question never looked carefully at a standardized test.
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The Legacy of Behaviorism: Do this and you'll get that.
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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.
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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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If unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are present, praise isn't necessary. If they're absent, praise won't help.
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Being a team player should not imply a demand for simple obedience and conformity.
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Punishments erode relationships and moral growth.
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Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.
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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.
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Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe.
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Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.
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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?
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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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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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Trying to be number one and trying to do a task well are two different things.
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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.
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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.
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