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
firsts basics bigs
We learn most readily, most naturally, most effectively, when we start with the big picture - precisely when the basics don't come first.
obsolete parody
In education, parody is obsolete.
relax might faculty
If faculty would relax their emphasis on grades, this might serve not to lower standards but to encourage an orientation toward learning.
country skills effort
Non-cooperative approaches, by contrast, almost always involve duplication of effort, since someone working independently must spend time and skills on problems that already have been encountered and overcome by someone else. A technical hitch, for example, is more likely to be solved quickly and imaginatively if scientists (including scientists from different countries) pool their talents rather than compete against one another.
thinking competition employee
Contrary to what you think, your company will be a lot more productive if you refuse to tolerate competition among your employees.
assessment expectations students
Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.
difficulty maximum optimal
Maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty.
important may outcomes
We can't value only what is easy to measure; measurable outcomes may be the least important results of learning.
curriculum students force
To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.
powerful reality quality
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.
tasks students pleasure
Grades dilute the pleasure that a student experiences on successfully completing a task.
unconditional-love enthusiasm helping
If unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are present, praise isn't necessary. If they're absent, praise won't help.
essence goal perspective
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?
children teaching responsibility
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.