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There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.

Alfie Kohn

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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Kinds
Matters
Motivation
Amount
Matter
Different
Kind

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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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Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.
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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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If unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are present, praise isn't necessary. If they're absent, praise won't help.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Social psychology has found the more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.
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The overwhelming number of teachers ...are unable to name or describe a theory of learning that underlies what they do.
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The race to win turns us all into losers.
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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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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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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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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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Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe.
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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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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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Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.
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We can't value only what is easy to measure measurable outcomes may be the least important results of learning.
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