Alfie Kohn Quotes

Children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions.

Educators remind us that what counts in a classroom is not what the teacher teaches; it’s what the learner learns.

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.

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

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.

Sometimes we have to put our foot down, ... but before we deliberately make children unhappy in order to get them to get into the car, or to do their homework or whatever, we need to weigh whether what we're doing to make it happen is worth the possible strain on our relationship with them.