Alfie Kohn Quotes - Page 3

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.

Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.

In short, with each of the thousand-and-one problems that present themselves in family life, our choice is between controlling and teaching, between creating an atmosphere of distrust and one of trust, between setting an example of power and helping children to learn responsibility, between quick-fix parenting and the kind that's focused on long-term goals.

If faculty would relax their emphasis on grades, this might serve not to lower standards but to encourage an orientation toward learning.

Trying to do well and trying to beat others are two different things. Excellence and victory are conceptually distinct . . . and are experienced differently.

The Legacy of Behaviorism: Do this and you'll get that.

Being a team player should not imply a demand for simple obedience and conformity.

It's not just that humiliating people, of any age, is a nasty and disrespectful way of treating them. It's that humiliation, like other forms of punishment, is counterproducti ve. 'Doing to' strategies - as opposed to those that might be described as 'working with' - can never achieve any result beyond temporary compliance, and it does so at a disturbing cost.

We learn most readily, most naturally, most effectively, when we start with the big picture - precisely when the basics don't come first.

To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.

Contrary to what you think, your company will be a lot more productive if you refuse to tolerate competition among your employees.

Grades dilute the pleasure that a student experiences on successfully completing a task.

Maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty.

Non-cooperative approaches, by contrast, almost always involve duplication of effort, since someone working independently must spend time and skills on problems that already have been encountered and overcome by someone else. A technical hitch, for example, is more likely to be solved quickly and imaginatively if scientists (including scientists from different countries) pool their talents rather than compete against one another.

When we do things that are controlling, whether intentional or not, we are not going to get those long-term outcomes.

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

When was the last time you spent the entire day with only 42 year olds?

The legendary statistical consultant W. Edwards Deming, . . . has called the system by which merit is appraised and rewarded 'the most powerful inhibitor to quality and productivity in the Western world' . . . it is simply unfair to the extent that employees are held responsible for what are, in reality, systemic factors that are beyond their control.

In education, parody is obsolete.

There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.

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.