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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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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Learning
Engagement
Focus
Outcomes
Often
Actual
Action
Performing
Subsequent
Important
Emotions
Detrimental
Different
Achievement
Determining
Thoughts
Preoccupation
Emotion
Outcome

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People will typically be more enthusiastic where they feel a sense of belonging and see themselves as part of a community than they will in a workplace in which each person is left to his own devices
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Unconditional parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason.
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Trying to do well and trying to beat others are two different things. Excellence and victory are conceptually distinct . . . and are experienced differently.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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In education, parody is obsolete.
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Educators remind us that what counts in a classroom is not what the teacher teaches it’s what the learner learns.
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When we do things that are controlling, whether intentional or not, we are not going to get those long-term outcomes.
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Punishments erode relationships and moral growth.
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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.
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Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.
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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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Children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions.
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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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Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously.
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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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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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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
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