Alfie Kohn
Sometimes we have to put our foot down, ... but before we deliberately make children unhappy in order to get them to get into the car, or to do their homework or whatever, we need to weigh whether what we're doing to make it happen is worth the possible strain on our relationship with them.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Smart
When test scores go up, we should worry, because of how poor a measure they are of what matters, and what you typically sacrifice in a desperate effort to raise scores.Collection: School
Strip away all the assumptions about what competition is supposed to do, all the claims in its behalf that we accept and repeat reflexively. What you have left is the essence of the concept: mutually exclusive goal attainment (MEGA). One person succeeds only if another does not. From this uncluttered perspective, it seems clear right away that something is drastically wrong with such an arrangement. 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?Collection: Essence
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.Collection: Focus
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.Collection: School
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 childrenCollection: Children
Unconditional parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason.Collection: Moving
Independence is useful, but caring attitudes and behaviors shrivel up in a culture where each person is responsible only for himself.Collection: Attitude
Trying to be number one and trying to do a task well are two different things.Collection: Two
Students should not only be trained to live in a democracy when they grow up; they should have the chance to live in one today.Collection: Growing Up
Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.Collection: Educational
Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.Collection: Evaluation
To feel controlled is to lose interest.Collection: Inspirational
The overwhelming number of teachers ...are unable to name or describe a theory of learning that underlies what they do.Collection: Teacher
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.Collection: Connections
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.Collection: School
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?Collection: Trying
Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe.Collection: Play
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.Collection: Children