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
curriculum students force
To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.
obsolete parody
In education, parody is obsolete.
tasks students pleasure
Grades dilute the pleasure that a student experiences on successfully completing a task.
relax might faculty
If faculty would relax their emphasis on grades, this might serve not to lower standards but to encourage an orientation toward learning.
legacy behaviorism
The Legacy of Behaviorism: Do this and you'll get that.
powerful reality quality
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.
motivation matter different
There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.
firsts basics bigs
We learn most readily, most naturally, most effectively, when we start with the big picture - precisely when the basics don't come first.
assessment expectations students
Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.
difficulty maximum optimal
Maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty.
important may outcomes
We can't value only what is easy to measure; measurable outcomes may be the least important results of learning.
teacher teaching learning
The overwhelming number of teachers ...are unable to name or describe a theory of learning that underlies what they do.
winning race loser
The race to win turns us all into losers.
punishment people age
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.