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In education, parody is obsolete.

Alfie Kohn

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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Education
Parody
Obsolete

More quotes by Alfie Kohn

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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.
Alfie Kohn
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Being a team player should not imply a demand for simple obedience and conformity.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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When test scores go up, we should worry, because of how poor a measure they are of what matters, and what you typically sacrifice in a desperate effort to raise scores.
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.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
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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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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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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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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Educators remind us that what counts in a classroom is not what the teacher teaches it’s what the learner learns.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.
Alfie Kohn