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
Alfie Kohn quotes about
community equally problems punishment rather solving striking
What is equally striking to me is this ... there isn't a sense of a community solving problems together, rather there's punishment for aberrant individuals.
punishment moral-growth erode
Punishments erode relationships and moral growth.
evaluation grades rating
Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.
unconditional-love enthusiasm helping
If unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are present, praise isn't necessary. If they're absent, praise won't help.
curriculum students force
To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.
tasks students pleasure
Grades dilute the pleasure that a student experiences on successfully completing a task.
legacy behaviorism
The Legacy of Behaviorism: Do this and you'll get that.
assessment expectations students
Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.
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.
caring knowing helpful
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
connections students thoughtfulness
John Dewey reminded us that the value of what students do 'resides in its connection with a stimulation of greater thoughtfulness, not in the greater strain it imposes.