Alfie Kohn Quotes

Where did this disposition come from? And what are our long-term goals for people—particularly children—with respect to motivation?

Control is an unavoidable feature of human relationships; all that actually varies is the subtlety of the system of reinforcement.

Four accounts of how praise may impede performance: it signals low ability, makes people feel pressured, invites a low-risk strategy to avoid failure, and reduces interest in the task itself.

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

Educators remind us that what counts in a classroom is not what the teacher teaches; it’s what the learner learns. And so it is in families. What matters is the message our kids receive, not the one w...

It’s been said that the personal is political, and there’s no doubt that parenting is intensely personal. To argue against traditional ways of raising children, or to suggest that we can help children...

A willingness to question the way things are paradoxically affirms a vision of the way things ought to be.

A growing number of educational theorists over the last couple of decades have made the point that facts come and go, while what endures, what we really require, is the ability to look up facts, to in...

In the pages that follow, I want to invite readers who don’t regard themselves as social conservatives to reexamine the traditionalist roots of attitudes about children they may have come to accept. A...

We tell them how good they are and they light up, eager to please, and try to please us some more. These are the children we should really worry about.

We accept without question that children have to memorize the state capitals even though they could look up that information whenever they need it. Like any other tool for facilitating the completion...

They're arguing for giving homework and tests to all young children, or separating them into winners and losers, because these tykes need to get used to such things -- as if exposure itself will inocu...

There is a time to admire the grace and persuasive power of an influential idea, and there is a time to fear its hold over us. The time to worry is when the idea is so widely shared that we no longer...

So what, exactly, is the positive reinforcement that’s being suspended when a child is given a time-out? Sometimes he’s doing something fun and is forced to quit. But this isn’t always the case—and ev...

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...

What provokes particular outrage and ridicule is the idea that children might feel good about themselves in the absence of impressive accomplishments, even though, as I’ll show, studies find that unco...

We complain loudly about such things as the sagging productivity of our workplaces, the crisis of our schools, and the warped values of our children. But the very strategy we use to solve those proble...

My mother maintained a sense of loving connection with me even during our worst conflicts or When my dad disagrees with me, I know that he still loves me.13 So, how would you like your children to ans...

Most people who refer to an epidemic of permissive parenting just assume that this is true, that everyone knows it, and therefore that there's no need to substantiate that claim. My efforts to track d...

The more we try to measure, control, and pressure learning from without, the more we obstruct the tendencies of students to be actively involved and to participate in their own education. Not only doe...