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Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.
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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.
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In a word, learning is decontextualized. We break ideas down into tiny pieces that bear no relation to the whole. We give students a brick of information, followed by another brick, followed by another brick, until they are graduated, at which point we assume they have a house. What they have is a pile of bricks, and they don't have it for long.
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Trying to be number one and trying to do a task well are two different things.
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If faculty would relax their emphasis on grades, this might serve not to lower standards but to encourage an orientation toward learning.
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A preoccupation with achievement is not only different from, but often detrimental to, a focus on learning. Thoughts and emotions while performing an action are more important in determining subsequent engagement than the actual outcome of that action.
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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.
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Grades dilute the pleasure that a student experiences on successfully completing a task.
Alfie Kohn
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We learn most readily, most naturally, most effectively, when we start with the big picture - precisely when the basics don't come first.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
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Independence is useful, but caring attitudes and behaviors shrivel up in a culture where each person is responsible only for himself.
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Most of us would protest that of course we love our children without any strings attached. But what counts is how things look from the perspective of the children
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There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount.
Alfie Kohn
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Unconditional parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason
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Trying to do well and trying to beat others are two different things. Excellence and victory are conceptually distinct... and are experienced differently.
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In some suburban schools, the curriculum is chock-full of rigorous A.P. courses and the parking lot glitters with pricey SUVs, but one doesn't have to look hard to find students who are starving themselves, cutting themselves, or medicating themselves, as well students who are taking out their frustrations on those who sit lower on the social food chain.
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If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow.
Alfie Kohn
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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?
Alfie Kohn
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To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.
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Educators remind us that what counts in a classroom is not what the teacher teaches; it's what the learner learns.
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Standardized testing has swelled and mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole.
Alfie Kohn
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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.
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People will typically be more enthusiastic where they feel a sense of belonging and see themselves as part of a community than they will in a workplace in which each person is left to his own devices
Alfie Kohn
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Children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions
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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.
Alfie Kohn
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Quote of the day
No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Carrie Chapman Catt
Alfie Kohn
Creative Commons
Born:
October 15, 1957
(age 66)
Bio:
Alfie Kohn is an American author and lecturer in the areas of education, parenting, and human behavior.
Known for:
Unconditional Parenting (2005)
Punished by Rewards (1993)
The Homework Myth (2006)
Beyond discipline (1996)
No contest (1986)
Most used words:
people
students
children
rewards
number
brick
control
Alfie Kohn on Wikipedia
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