Home > Author > Alfie Kohn

Alfie Kohn QUOTES

Alfie Kohn QUOTES

1 " Many of our elected officials have virtually handed the keys to our schools over to corporate interests. Presidential commissions on education are commonly chaired by the executives of large companies. "

― Alfie Kohn , The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards"

2 " The more we want our children to be (1) lifelong learners, genuinely excited about words and numbers and ideas, (2) avoid sticking with what’s easy and safe, and (3) become sophisticated thinkers, the more we should do everything possible to help them forget about grades. "

― Alfie Kohn

3 " How well you do things should be incidental, not integral, to the way you regard yourself. "

― Alfie Kohn , The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Coddled Kids, Helicopter Parents, and Other Phony Crises

4 " My advice is to make a point of apologizing to your child about something at least twice a month. Why twice a month? I don't know. It sounds about right to me. (Almost all the specific advice in parenting books is similarly arbitrary. At least I admit it.) "

― Alfie Kohn , Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason

5 " 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. "

― Alfie Kohn , Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason

6 " 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. "

― Alfie Kohn , Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason

7 " 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 , Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes

8 " For the anthropomorphic view of the rat, American psychology substituted a rattomorphic view of man. —Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation "

― Alfie Kohn , Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes

9 " I think our challenge as parents is to rise above that preference for the child of least resistance and to think beyond short-term success as a criterion—particularly if success is defined by conventional and insipid standards. Don’t we want our kids to be inspiring rather than spend their lives just collecting tokens (grades, money, approval)? Don’t we want them to think in the plural rather than focusing only on what will benefit them personally? Don’t we want them to appraise traditions with fresh eyes and raise questions about what seems silly or self-defeating or oppressive, rather than doing what has always been done just because it’s always been done? "

― Alfie Kohn , The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Coddled Kids, Helicopter Parents, and Other Phony Crises

10 " Again, the most effective (and least destructive) way to help a child succeed—whether she’s writing or skiing, playing a trumpet or a computer game—is to do everything possible to help her fall in love with what she’s doing, to pay less attention to how successful she was (or is likely to be) and show more interest in the task. That’s just another way of saying that we need to encourage more, judge less, and love always. "

― Alfie Kohn , Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason

11 " When we set children against one another in contests—from spelling bees to awards assemblies to science “fairs” (that are really contests), from dodge ball to honor rolls to prizes for the best painting or the most books read—we teach them to confuse excellence with winning, as if the only way to do something well is to outdo others. "

― Alfie Kohn , The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Coddled Kids, Helicopter Parents, and Other Phony Crises

12 " Most children seem eager, even desperate, to please those in authority, reluctant to rock the boat even when the boat clearly needs rocking. In a way, an occasional roll-your-eyes story of excess in the other direction marks the exception that proves the rule. And the rule is a silent epidemic of obedience. For every kid who is slapped with the label “Oppositional Defiant Disorder,” hundreds suffer from what one educator has mischievously called Compliance Acquiescent Disorder. The symptoms of CAD, he explained, include the following: “defers to authority,” “actively obeys rules,” “fails to argue back,” “knuckles under instead of mobilizing others in support,” and “stays restrained when outrage is warranted. "

― Alfie Kohn , The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Coddled Kids, Helicopter Parents, and Other Phony Crises

13 " The story of declining school quality across the twentieth century is, for the most part, a fable,” says social scientist Richard Rothstein, whose book The Way We Were? cites a series of similar attacks on American education, moving backward one decade at a time.3 Each generation invokes the good old days, during which, we discover, people had been doing exactly the same thing. "

― Alfie Kohn , The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Coddled Kids, Helicopter Parents, and Other Phony Crises

14 " The dominant problem with parenting in our society isn't permissiveness, but the fear of permissiveness. We're so worried about spoiling kids that we often end up over controlling them. "

― Alfie Kohn , Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason

15 " They are not raising children so much as living résumés, and by the time high school arrives, the kids have learned to sign up for activities strictly to impress college admissions committees, ignoring (or, eventually, losing sight of) what they personally find interesting in the here-and-now. They have acquired the habit of asking teachers, “Do we need to know this?”—rather than, say, “What does this mean?”—as they grimly set about the business of trying to ratchet up their GPA or squeeze out another few points on the SAT. "

― Alfie Kohn , Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason

16 " My wife says [parenting] is a test of your capacity to deal with disorder and unpredictability -- a test you can't study for, and one whose results aren't always reassuring. "

― Alfie Kohn , Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason

17 " Children aren’t helped to become caring members of a community, or ethical decision-makers, or critical thinkers, so much as they’re simply trained to follow directions. "

― Alfie Kohn , Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason

18 " Students get the message bout what adults want. When 4th graders in a variety of classroomswere asked what their teachers most wanted them to do, they didn't say, "Ask thoughtful questions" or "Make responsible decisions" or Help others." They said, "Be quiet, don't fool around, and get our work done on time. "

― Alfie Kohn , Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes

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

― Alfie Kohn , Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes

20 " Few readers will be shocked by the news that extrinsic motivators are a poor substitute for genuine interest in what one is doing. What is likely to be far more surprising and disturbing is the further point that rewards, like punishments, actually undermine the intrinsic motivation that promotes optimal performance. "

― Alfie Kohn , Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes