Alfie Kohn Quotes & Sayings

All rewards have the same effect," one writer declares. "They dilute the pure joy that comes from success itself. — Alfie Kohn

Unconditional parents want to know how to do something other than threaten and punish. They don't see their relationship with their children as adversarial, so their goal is to avoid battles, not win them. — Alfie Kohn

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. — Alfie Kohn

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. — Alfie Kohn

Obviously, things work best when parents and teachers are helping kids to become good people - and, better yet, when they're actively supporting one another's efforts. — Alfie Kohn

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

The late W. Edwards Deming, guru of Quality management, once declared, 'The most important things we need to manage can't be measured.' If that's true of what we need to manage, it should be even more obvious that it's true of what we need to teach. — Alfie Kohn

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

To feel controlled is to lose interest. — Alfie Kohn

Thomas Gordon said it well: "Children sometimes know better than parents when they are sleepy or hungry; know better the qualities of their friends, their own aspirations and goals, how their various teachers treat them; know better the urges and needs within their bodies, whom they love and whom they don't, what they value and what they don't."4 In any case, we can't always assume that because we're more mature we necessarily have more insight into our children than they have into themselves. — Alfie Kohn

To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum. — Alfie Kohn

It's more common to ignore the epidemic of punitive parenting and focus instead on the occasional example of permissiveness - sometimes even to the point of pronouncing an entire generation spoiled. It's revealing, and even somewhat amusing, that similar alarms probably have been raised about every generation throughout recorded history. — Alfie Kohn

Trying to do well and trying to beat others are two different things. Excellence and victory are conceptually distinct ... and are experienced differently. — Alfie Kohn

S. Neill put it, promising a reward for an activity is "tantamount to declaring that the activity is not worth doing for its own sake."26 Thus, a parent who says to a child, "If you finish your math homework, you may watch an hour of TV" is teaching the child to think of math as something that isn't much fun. — Alfie Kohn

The first is spatial: I can imagine how you literally see the world, such that what's on my right is on your left when we're facing one another. In the second type, I can imagine how you think about things - for example, how you might have trouble solving a problem that's easy for me, or how you might hold beliefs about, say, raising children that are different from mine. The third kind consists of imagining how you feel, how something could upset you even if it doesn't have that effect on me. (This last type of perspective taking is sometimes confused with "empathy," which means that I share your feelings. To empathize isn't just to understand that you're angry but actually to feel angry along with you.) — Alfie Kohn

Standardized testing has swelled and mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole. — Alfie Kohn

The author Barbara Coloroso suggests that, before asking something, you might 'question why you are asking it.' Laying bare our motives can offer guidance about whether it's worth asking. Hint: it's when we're not entirely sure what the child will say, and when we're open to more than one response, that a question is most likely to be beneficial. — Alfie Kohn

Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously. — Alfie Kohn

Good tennis players are those who beat other tennis players, and a good shot during play is one the opponent can't return. But that's not a truth about life or excellence -- it's a truth about tennis. We've created an artificial structure in which one person can't succeed without doing so at someone else's expense, and then we accuse anyone who prefers other kinds of activities of being naive because "there can be only one best -- you're it or you're not," as the teacher who delivered that much-admired you're-not-special commencement speech declared. You see the sleight of hand here? The question isn't whether everyone playing a competitive game can win or whether every student can be above average. Of course they can't. The question that we're discouraged from asking is why our games are competitive -- or our students are compulsively ranked against one another -- in the first place. — Alfie Kohn

To examine the claim that rewards are effective at altering behavior, we pose three questions: First, for whom are they effective? Second, for how long are they effective? And third, at what, exactly, are they effective? (I have already hinted at a fourth question - At what cost are they effective? - but — Alfie Kohn

As Thomas Gordon pointed out, 'Parents who find unacceptable a great many things that their children do or say will inevitably foster in these children a deep feeling that they are unacceptable as persons.' That doesn't change just because the parents remember to say soothingly, 'We love you, honey; we just hate almost everything you do. — 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

There's a huge difference between a student whose objective is to get a good grade and a student whose objective is to solve a problem or understand a story. What's more, the research suggests that when kids are encouraged to focus on getting better marks in school, three things tend to happen: They lose interest in the learning itself, they try to avoid tasks that are challenging, and they're less likely to think deeply and critically. — Alfie Kohn

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 Legacy of Behaviorism: Do this and you'll get that. — Alfie Kohn

The more pressing question, of course, is how we can communicate our love after kids keep acting up even when we think they ought to know better. (We've certainly told them enough times!) Here it's common to assume that they're "testing limits." This is a very popular phrase in the discipline field and it's often used as a justification for parents to impose more, or tighter, limits. Sometimes the assumption that kids are testing us even becomes a rationalization for punishing them. But my suspicion is that, by misbehaving, children may be testing something else entirely - namely, the unconditionality of our love. Perhaps they're acting in unacceptable ways to see if we'll stop accepting them. — Alfie Kohn

The way kids learn to make good decisions is by making decisions, not by following directions. — Alfie Kohn

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

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 even notice it, when it is so deeply rooted that it feels to us like plain common sense. At the point when objections are not answered anymore because they are no longer even raised, we are not in control: we do not have the idea; it has us. — Alfie Kohn

The failure to adopt other people's points of view, to take an imaginative leap out of oneself, is one way to account for much of the behavior we find, troublesome, from littering to murder. (Kafka once referred to war as "a monstrous failure of imagination.") Perspective taking helps us at once to see others as fundamentally similar to ourselves despite superficial differences (in that we share a common humanity) — Alfie Kohn

Grades dilute the pleasure that a student experiences on successfully completing a task. — Alfie Kohn

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. — Alfie Kohn

Nostalgia is only amnesia turned around, said the poet Adrienne Rich. — Alfie Kohn

Don't let anyone tell you that standardized tests are not accurate measures. The truth of the matter is they offer a remarkably precise method for gauging the size of the houses near the school where the test was administered. — 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

Let me note, finally, that most of the research for this book was done in the libraries of Harvard University, the size of whose holdings is matched only by the school's determination to restrict access to them. I am delighted to have been able to use these resources, and it hardly matters that I was afforded this privilege only because the school thought I was someone else. — Alfie Kohn

As it happens, most studies have found that unexpected rewards are much less destructive than the rewards people are told about beforehand and are deliberately trying to obtain. — Alfie Kohn

Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe. — 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

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

Some who support [more] coercive strategies assume that children will run wild if they are not controlled. However, the children for whom this is true typically turn out to be those accustomed to being controlled - those who are not trusted, given explanations, encouraged to think for themselves, helped to develop and internalize good values, and so on. Control breeds the need for more control, which is used to justify the use of control. — Alfie Kohn

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 question is not whether more flies can be caught with honey than with vinegar, but why the flies are being caught in either case - and how this feels to the fly. — Alfie Kohn

While it may be possible to spoil kids with too many things, it isn't possible to spoil them with too much (unconditional) love. As one writer put it, the problem with children whom we would describe as spoiled is that they 'get too much of what they want and too little of what they need.' Therefore, give them affection (which they need) without limit, without reservations, and without excuse. Pay as much attention to them as you can, regardless of mood or circumstance. Let them know you're delighted to be with them, that you care about them no matter what happens. — Alfie Kohn

Trying to be number one and trying to do a task well are two different things. — Alfie Kohn

Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards. — Alfie Kohn

When test scores go up, we should worry, because of how poor a measure they are of what matters, and what you typically sacrifice in a desperate effort to raise scores. — Alfie Kohn

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

I realized that this is what many people in our society seem to want most from children: not that they are caring or creative or curious, but simply that they are well behaved. — Alfie Kohn

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

There are different kinds of motivation, and the kind matters more than the amount. — Alfie Kohn

If a child is off-task ... mayb e the problem is not the child ... maybe it's the task. — Alfie Kohn

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

When you stand by and let bad things happen, your child experiences the twin disappointments that something went wrong and you did not seem to care enough about her to lift a finger to help prevent the mishap. — Alfie Kohn

Nothing is more important to us when we're young than how our parents feel about us. Uncertainty about that, or terror about being abandoned, can leave its mark even after we're grown. — Alfie Kohn

When unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are always present, "Good job!" isn't necessary; when they're absent, "Good job!" won't help. — Alfie Kohn

We're told that parents push their children too hard to excel (by ghostwriting their homework and hiring tutors, and demanding that they triumph over their peers), but also that parents try to protect kids from competition (by giving trophies to everyone), that expectations have declined, that too much attention is paid to making children happy.
Similarly, young adults are described as self-satisfied twits - more pleased with themselves than their accomplishments merit - but also as being so miserable that they're in therapy. Or there's an epidemic of helicopter parenting, even though parents are so focused on their gadgets that they ignore their children. The assumption seems to be that readers will just nod right along, failing to note any inconsistencies, as long as the tone is derogatory and the perspective is traditionalist. — Alfie Kohn

The troubling truth is that rewards and punishments are not opposites at all; they are two sides of the same coin. And it is a coin that does not buy very much. — Alfie Kohn

Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation. — Alfie Kohn

Punishment and reward proceed from basically the same psychological model, one that conceives of motivation as nothing more than the manipulation of behavior. — Alfie Kohn

Besides, what best prepares children to deal with the challenges of the "real world" is to experience success and joy. People don't get better at coping with unhappiness because they were deliberately made unhappy when they were young. — Alfie Kohn

Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students. — Alfie Kohn

When was the last time you spent the entire day with only 42 year olds? — Alfie Kohn

When we do things that are controlling, whether intentional or not, we are not going to get those long-term outcomes. — Alfie Kohn

To be well-educated is to have the desire as well as the means to make sure that learning never ends. — Alfie Kohn

A preoccupation with achievement is not only different from, but often detrimental to, a focus on learning. Thoughts and emotions while performing an action are more important in determining subsequent engagement than the actual outcome of that action. — Alfie Kohn

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

We have so much to cover and so little time to cover it. Howard Gardner refers to curriculum coverage as the single greatest enemy of understanding. Think instead about ideas to be discovered. — Alfie Kohn

However we think about these [long-term] goals, we ought to think about them a lot. They ought to be our touchstone, if only to keep us from being sucked into the quicksand of daily life. — Alfie Kohn

In my view, there are two fundamentally different ways one can respond to a child who does something wrong. One is to impose a punitive consequence. Another is to see the situation as a "teachable moment," an opportunity to educate or to solve a problem together. The response here is not "You've misbehaved; now here's what I'm going to do to you" but "Something has gone wrong; what can we do about it? — Alfie Kohn

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

The value of a book about dealing with children is inversely proportional to the number of times it contains the word behavior. — Alfie Kohn

The research suggests that praise may have [a negative, unintended] effect, directing attention away from the task [at hand] and toward your reaction. — Alfie Kohn

Far from helping students to develop into mature, self-reliant, self-motivated individuals, schools seem to do everything they can to keep youngsters in a state of chronic, almost infantile, dependency. The pervasive atmosphere of distrust, together with rules covering the most minute aspects of existence, teach students every day that they are not people of worth, and certainly not individuals capable of regulating their own behavior. — Alfie Kohn

If unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are present, praise isn't necessary. If they're absent, praise won't help. — Alfie Kohn

Most of us would protest that of course we love our children without any strings attached. But what counts is how things look from the perspective of the children — Alfie Kohn

We can't value only what is easy to measure; measurable outcomes may be the least important results of learning. — Alfie Kohn

Social psychology has found the more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward. — Alfie Kohn

You have to give them unconditional love. They need to know that even if they screw up, you love them. You don't want them to grow up and resent you or, even worse, parent the way you parented them. — Alfie Kohn

By contrast, training and goal-setting programs had a far greater impact on productivity than did anything involving payment.32 — Alfie Kohn

But my point is not just that the psychological theory is inadequate; it is that the practice is unproductive. If we do not address the ultimate cause of a problem, the problem will not get solved. This is not to say — Alfie Kohn

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

Educational success should be measured by how strong your desire is to keep learning. — Alfie Kohn

Children don't just need to be loved; they need to know that nothing they do will change the fact that they're loved. — Alfie Kohn

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 unconditional self-esteem is a key component of psychological health. — Alfie Kohn

Contingent on what, though? Some bases for feeling good about oneself may be worse than others. Jennifer Crocker, a psychologist at Ohio State University, and her colleagues have shown that the prognosis is particularly bad when self-esteem hinges on outdoing others (competitive success), approval by others, physical appearance, or academic achievement.47 Consider the last of those. When children's self-esteem rises or falls with how well they do at school, achievement can resemble an addiction, "requiring ever greater success to avoid feelings of worthlessness." And if it looks as though success is unlikely, kids may "disengage from the task, deciding it doesn't matter, rather than suffer the loss of self-esteem that accompanies failure. — Alfie Kohn

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

It's not just that humiliating people, of any age, is a nasty and disrespectful way of treating them. It's that humiliation, like other forms of punishment, is counterproducti ve. 'Doing to' strategies
as opposed to those that might be described as 'working with'
can never achieve any result beyond temporary compliance, and it does so at a disturbing cost. — Alfie Kohn

Those who know they're valued irrespective of their accomplishments often end up accomplishing quite a lot. It's the experience of being accepted without conditions that helps people develop a healthy confidence in themselves, a belief that it's safe to take risks and try new things. — Alfie Kohn

If rewards do not work, what does? I recommend that employers pay workers well and fairly and then do everything possible to help them forget about money. A preoccupation with money distracts everyone - employers and employees - from the issues that really matter. — Alfie Kohn

We learn most readily, most naturally, most effectively, when we start with the big picture - precisely when the basics don't come first. — Alfie Kohn

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

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 problems - dangling rewards like incentive plans and grades and candy bars in front of people - is partly responsible for the fix we're in. We are a society of loyal Skinnerians, unable to think our way out of the box we have reinforced ourselves into. — Alfie Kohn

If I offered you a thousand dollars to take off your shoes, you'd very likely accept
and then I could triumphantly announce that 'rewards work.' But as with punishments, they can never help someone develop a *commitment* to a task or action, a reason to keep doing it when there's no longer a payoff. — Alfie Kohn

If faculty would relax their emphasis on grades, this might serve not to lower standards but to encourage an orientation toward learning. — Alfie Kohn

If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow. — Alfie Kohn

Rewards usually improve performance only at extremely simple - indeed, mindless - tasks, and even then they improve only quantitative performance. — Alfie Kohn

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. — Alfie Kohn

Deferral of gratification may be an effect, not a cause. Just because some children were more effective than others at distracting themselves from [the marshmallow in the famous Marshmallow Test] doesn't mean this capacity was responsible for the impressive results found ten years later. Instead, both of these things may have been due to something about their home environment. If that's true, there's no reason to believe that enhancing children's ability to defer gratification would be beneficial: It was just a marker, not a cause. By way of analogy, teenagers who visit ski resorts over winter break probably have a superior record of being admitted to the Ivy League. Should we therefore hire consultants to teach low-income children how to ski in order to improve the odds that colleges will accept them? — Alfie Kohn

Maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty. — Alfie Kohn