Oh Alfie Quotes & Sayings

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

She wouldn't understand, and he couldn't explain. How bad it felt to be a shock. To be an idea people had to get used to. To be a moment of hesitation. A flinch when someone touched you. A wariness in their eyes. — Alexis Hall

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

To feel controlled is to lose interest. — Alfie Kohn

Sometimes the alternative to black and white isn't gray; it's, say, orange. — Alfie Kohn

With learning lines, before I had Alfie, I'd put it off and think, 'Oh, I'll just have a glass of wine and then do it later,' but when you've finally got a child to bed and you know you've only got an hour, then you achieve so much. — Lesley Manville

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 overwhelming number of teachers ... are unable to name or describe a theory of learning that underlies what they do. — 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

Alfie sighed. "Let me guess, it's a bad thing now. Because of Tumblr or something. — Alexis Hall

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'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

What can we surmise about the likelihood of someone's being caring and generous, loving and helpful, just from knowing that they are a believer? Virtually nothing, say psychologists, sociologists, and others who have studied that question for decade — Alfie Kohn

But there is something seductive and the character, Alfie is so charming, and does make you think like you are the most important thing in the world but he's not that nice, is he. — Sienna Miller

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

I'd love to work with Lena Headey, Alfie Allen, Charles Dance. I'd love to work with Peter Dinklage. — Gwendoline Christie

It wasn't the footman she was afraid of - it was those he was parroting. Alfie was the sort of dim-noll who never had his own thoughts but borrowed other people's. — Ellen Renner

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

Unconditional parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason — Alfie Kohn

Although I have fantastic connections, I didn't know as a child what feeling secure meant. — Alfie Allen

The race to win turns us all into losers. — Alfie Kohn

In an autobiographical essay published in 1946, Albert Einstein reflected on his days as a student of physics some fifty years earlier. He recalled his teachers with affection but, referring to exams, said, This coercion had such a deterring effect that after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year. — 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

You are a pawn and a tool," he said. "But you're the right one for the job. For that, I am sorry. — Jamie Wyman

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

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

I'm so computer illiterate, I barely know how to send an e-mail. I mean, I have a laptop and Gmail, but I don't really look at it much. — Alfie Allen

Alfie was the first time I was above the title; the first time I became a star in America. — Michael Caine

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

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