Alfie Kohn Quotes About Students

Quotes about: Students

• 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

  Ideas, Long, Giving

  Alfie Kohn (1999). “Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes”, p.232, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• In outstanding classrooms, teachers do more listening than talking, and students do more talking than listening. Terrific teachers often have teeth marks on their tongues.

  Alfie Kohn

  Teacher, Talking, Listening

• Saying you taught it but the student didn't learn it is like saying you sold it but the customer didn't buy it.

  Alfie Kohn

  Teaching, Taught, Students

• 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.

  Alfie Kohn

  Growing Up, Should Have, Democracy

• Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.

  Alfie Kohn

  Assessment, Expectations, Students

  Alfie Kohn (2000). “The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "tougher Standards"”, p.198, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

  Alfie Kohn

  Curriculum, Students, Force

  Alfie Kohn (1999). “Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes”, p.165, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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.

  Alfie Kohn

  School, Cutting, Frustration

• Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.

  Alfie Kohn

  Educational, Done, Students

• 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.

  Alfie Kohn

  Smart, Thinking, Challenges

  Alfie Kohn (2000). “The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards"”, p.37, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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.

  Alfie Kohn

  Connections, Students, Thoughtfulness

  Alfie Kohn (2007). “The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing”, p.72, Da Capo Press

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

  Alfie Kohn

  Tasks, Students, Pleasure

  Alfie Kohn (1999). “Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes”, p.220, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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