Alfie Kohn quotes - page 2

Punishments erode relationships and moral growth. (Alfie Kohn)
Unconditional parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason. View quote
Alfie Kohn
Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much. View quote
Alfie Kohn
Trying to be number one and trying to do a task well are two different things. View quote
Alfie Kohn
Independence is useful, but caring attitudes and behaviors shrivel up in a culture where each person is responsible only for himself. View quote
Alfie Kohn
Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students. View quote
Alfie Kohn
Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation. View quote
Alfie Kohn
To feel controlled is to lose interest. View quote
Alfie Kohn
The race to win turns us all into losers. View quote
Alfie Kohn
How can we do our best when we are spending our energies trying to make others lose - and fearing that they will make us lose? View quote
Alfie Kohn
Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students. (Alfie Kohn)
If faculty would relax their emphasis on grades, this might serve not to lower standards but to encourage an orientation toward learning. View quote
Alfie Kohn
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. View quote
Alfie Kohn
The Legacy of Behaviorism: Do this and you'll get that. View quote
Alfie Kohn
Trying to do well and trying to beat others are two different things. Excellence and victory are conceptually distinct . . . and are experienced differently. View quote
Alfie Kohn
We learn most readily, most naturally, most effectively, when we start with the big picture - precisely when the basics don't come first. View quote
Alfie Kohn
Maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty. View quote
Alfie Kohn
When we do things that are controlling, whether intentional or not, we are not going to get those long-term outcomes. View quote
Alfie Kohn
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. View quote
Alfie Kohn
There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount. View quote
Alfie Kohn
It doesn't matter how motivated students are; what matters is how students are motivated. (Alfie Kohn)
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. View quote
Alfie Kohn
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. View quote
Alfie Kohn
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. View quote
Alfie Kohn
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. View quote
Alfie Kohn