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Alfie Kohn Quotes

Alfie Kohn is an American author and lecturer in the areas of education, parenting, and human behavior. He is a proponent of progressive education and has offered critiques of many traditional aspects of parenting, managing, and American society more generally, drawing in each case from social science research.Kohn's challenges to widely accepted theories and practices have made him a controversial figure, particularly with behaviorists, conservatives, and those who defend the practices he calls into question, such as the use of competition, incentive programs, conventional discipline, standardized testing, grades, homework, and traditional schooling. Wikipedia  

✵ 15. October 1957
Alfie Kohn photo

Works

Alfie Kohn: 13 quotes2 likes

Famous Alfie Kohn Quotes

“Children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions”

Alfie Kohn

The Homework Myth, chap. 10

“The real alternative to being Number One is not being Number Two; it is dispensing with rankings altogether”

Alfie Kohn

No Contest, chap. 9

“The value of a book about dealing with children is inversely proportional to the number of times it contains the word behavior.”

Alfie Kohn

Published in Education Leadership, September 2005 http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/uncondtchg.htm

“It doesn't matter how motivated students are; what matters is how students are motivated”

Alfie Kohn

"The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation," Chronicle of Higher Education

“Nothing about the concept of positive interdependence requires that members of the group avoid conflict, and there are good data to suggest that they should not do so.”

Alfie Kohn

What to Look For in a Classroom, p. 50

“Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe.”

Alfie Kohn

Punished by Rewards

Alfie Kohn Quotes about people

“Some people undoubtedly find it convenient to have students arrive having already been stamped PRIME, CHOICE, SELECT, or STANDARD.”

Alfie Kohn

Punished by Rewards

“Most things that we and the people around us do constantly… have come to seem so natural and inevitable that merely to pose the question, 'Why are we doing this?' can strike us as perplexing – and also, perhaps, a little unsettling. On general principle, it is a good idea to challenge ourselves in this way about anything we have come to take for granted; the more habitual, the more valuable this line of inquiry.”

Alfie Kohn

Punished by Rewards

“Most things that we and the people around us do constantly… have come to seem so natural and inevitable that merely to pose the question, 'Why are we doing this?”

Alfie Kohn book Punished by Rewards

can strike us as perplexing – and also, perhaps, a little unsettling. On general principle, it is a good idea to challenge ourselves in this way about anything we have come to take for granted; the more habitual, the more valuable this line of inquiry.
Punished by Rewards

Alfie Kohn Quotes

“The value of a book about dealing with children is inversely proportional to the number of times it contains the word behavior. When our primary focus is on discrete behaviors, we end up ignoring the whole child.”

Alfie Kohn

"Unconditional Teaching," Educational Leadership

“Rewards and punishments are not opposites at all; they are two sides of the same coin. And it is a coin that does not buy very much.”

Alfie Kohn

Source: Punished by Rewards, Chapter 4

“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

Punished by Rewards

“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.”

Alfie Kohn

The Brighter Side of Human Nature: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life, 1990.

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