Alfie Kohn - Punished by Rewards (1993)

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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
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.

Alfie Kohn
Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe.

Alfie Kohn
Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.

Alfie Kohn
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.

Alfie Kohn
Punishment and reward proceed from basically the same psychological model, one that conceives of motivation as nothing more than the manipulation of behavior.

Alfie Kohn
Some people undoubtedly find it convenient to have students arrive having already been stamped PRIME, CHOICE, SELECT, or STANDARD.

Alfie Kohn
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
Independence is useful, but caring attitudes and behaviors shrivel up in a culture where each person is responsible only for himself.

Alfie Kohn
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.

Alfie Kohn
Grades dilute the pleasure that a student experiences on successfully completing a task.

Alfie Kohn
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.

Alfie Kohn
If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow.

Alfie Kohn
To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.

Alfie Kohn