Alfie Kohn
Alfie Kohn
Alfie Kohnis 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...
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth15 October 1957
people psychology rewards
Social psychology has found the more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.
growing-up should-have democracy
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.
people intelligence rewards
Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.
smart thinking challenges
What is wrong with encouraging students to put "how well they're doing" ahead of "what they're doing." An impressive and growing body of research suggests that this emphasis (1) undermines students' interest in learning, (2) makes failure seem overwhelming, (3) leads students to avoid challenging themselves, (4) reduces the quality of learning, and (5) invites students to think about how smart they are instead of how hard they tried.
evaluation grades rating
Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.
important quality needs
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.
educational done students
Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.
team simple player
Being a team player should not imply a demand for simple obedience and conformity.
years lasts last-time
When was the last time you spent the entire day with only 42 year olds?
two numbers trying
Trying to be number one and trying to do a task well are two different things.
motivation punishment rewards
Punishment and reward proceed from basically the same psychological model, one that conceives of motivation as nothing more than the manipulation of behavior.
two excellence victory
Trying to do well and trying to beat others are two different things. Excellence and victory are conceptually distinct . . . and are experienced differently.
essence goal perspective
Strip away all the assumptions about what competition is supposed to do, all the claims in its behalf that we accept and repeat reflexively. What you have left is the essence of the concept: mutually exclusive goal attainment (MEGA). One person succeeds only if another does not. From this uncluttered perspective, it seems clear right away that something is drastically wrong with such an arrangement. 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?
unconditional-love enthusiasm helping
If unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are present, praise isn't necessary. If they're absent, praise won't help.