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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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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Toward
Emphasis
Learning
Grades
Might
Encourage
Would
Faculty
Lower
Relax
Serve
Standards
Orientation

More quotes by 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.
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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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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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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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Unconditional parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason.
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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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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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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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To be well-educated is to have the desire as well as the means to make sure that learning never ends.
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Grades dilute the pleasure that a student experiences on successfully completing a task.
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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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If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow.
Alfie Kohn
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Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.
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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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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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Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.
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Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.
Alfie Kohn
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Sometimes we have to put our foot down, ... but before we deliberately make children unhappy in order to get them to get into the car, or to do their homework or whatever, we need to weigh whether what we're doing to make it happen is worth the possible strain on our relationship with them.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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Saying you taught it but the student didn't learn it is like saying you sold it but the customer didn't buy it.
Alfie Kohn