Alfie Kohn Quotes

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

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 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

Like any other tool for facilitating the completion of a questionable task, rewards offer a how answer to what is really a why question.

~ Alfie Kohn

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

~ Alfie Kohn

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

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

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

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