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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
Serve
Standards
Orientation
Toward
Emphasis
Learning
Grades
Might
Encourage
Would
Faculty
Lower
Relax

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Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.
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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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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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In education, parody is obsolete.
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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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Maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty.
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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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Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.
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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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Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question never looked carefully at a standardized test.
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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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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.
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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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There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.
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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.
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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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Saying you taught it but the student didn't learn it is like saying you sold it but the customer didn't buy it.
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Grades dilute the pleasure that a student experiences on successfully completing a task.
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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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