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Some who support [more] coercive strategies assume that children will run wild if they are not controlled. However, the children for whom this is true typically turn out to be those accustomed to being controlled— those who are not trusted, given explanations, encouraged to think for themselves, helped to develop and internalize good values, and so on. Control breeds the need for more control, which is used to justify the use of control.
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Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe.
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Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.
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Those who know they're valued irrespective of their accomplishments often end up accomplishing quite a lot. It's the experience of being accepted without conditions that helps people develop a healthy confidence in themselves, a belief that it's safe to take risks and try new things.
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It doesn't matter how motivated students are; what matters is how students are motivated
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The value of a book about dealing with children is inversely proportional to the number of times it contains the word behavior. When our primary focus is on discrete behaviors, we end up ignoring the whole child.
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How we feel about our kids isn't as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them.
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Nothing about the concept of positive interdependence requires that members of the group avoid conflict, and there are good data to suggest that they should not do so.
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Rewards and punishments are not opposites at all; they are two sides of the same coin. And it is a coin that does not buy very much.
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The real alternative to being Number One is not being Number Two; it is dispensing with rankings altogether
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Punishment and reward proceed from basically the same psychological model, one that conceives of motivation as nothing more than the manipulation of behavior.
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Some people undoubtedly find it convenient to have students arrive having already been stamped PRIME, CHOICE, SELECT, or STANDARD.
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Most things that we and the people around us do constantly... have come to seem so natural and inevitable that merely to pose the question, 'Why are we doing this?' can strike us as perplexing – and also, perhaps, a little unsettling. On general principle, it is a good idea to challenge ourselves in this way about anything we have come to take for granted; the more habitual, the more valuable this line of inquiry.
Alfie Kohn
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Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Alfie Kohn
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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
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control
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