A Quote by Alfie Kohn

What is wrong with encouraging students to put "how well they're doing" ahead of "what they're doing." An impressive and growing body of research suggests that this emphasis (1) undermines students' interest in learning, (2) makes failure seem overwhelming, (3) leads students to avoid challenging themselves, (4) reduces the quality of learning, and (5) invites students to think about how smart they are instead of how hard they tried.

Alfie Kohn

Quote Topics

About Avoid Body Challenging Doing Emphasis Encouraging Failure Growing Hard How Impressive Instead Interest Invites Leads Learning Makes Overwhelming Put Quality Research Seem Smart Students Themselves Think Tried Well Wrong

Quote Author

Alfie Kohn
American - Author
Born: October 15, 1957

Teachers teach and students educate. Students are the only true educators. Historically, every other method of education has failed. Education occurs when students get excited about learning and apply themselves; students do this when they experience great teachers.

Oliver DeMille

Public education for some time has been heavily focused on what curricula we believe will be helpful to students. Life-Enriching Education is based on the premise that the relationship between teachers and students, the relationships of students with one another, and the relationships of students to what they are learning are equally important in preparing students for the future.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

I often suggest that my students ask themselves the simple question: Do I know how to live? Do I know how to eat? How much to sleep? How to take care of my body? How to relate to other people? ... Life is the real teacher, and the curriculum is all set up. The question is: are there any students?

Larry Rosenberg

It's important to know how to lead and manage a classroom with flexibility. Students of all ages are quite capable of learning these routines and contributing to their success once the teacher is comfortable guiding students in that direction.

Carol Ann Tomlinson

Many students learn best by doing. But because classrooms force the same pace on all students, they limit the degree to which students can truly learn through trial and error. Instead, lectures still force many students to follow material passively and in lockstep pace.

Sebastian Thrun

Students follow rules. Students complete assignments. The job of students - in part, at least - is to please their teachers. Now, I realize I may be exaggerating a little here, but basically I think I'm right: students do what they're told.

Jeffrey Toobin

I think there's too much emphasis placed on learning things by rote that you don't really care about. So what happens to students in school is that they eventually lose interest in learning, because they've been forced to learn the required courses, rather than pursing their passion.

Jack Canfield

Creating a classroom environment that encourages students to take the risk of learning. We've known for a long time that when students lack a sense of safety or of belonging or of contribution, learning takes second place to meeting those needs.

Carol Ann Tomlinson

Yale students want to impress you with what they're doing. Harvard students want to impress you with how cool they look while doing it.

Alexandra Petri

Learning should be engaging. Testing should not be the be all and end all. All students should have a broad curriculum that includes the arts and enrichment. Students should have opportunities to work in teams and engage in project-based learning. And student and family well-being should be front and center.

Randi Weingarten

The teachers were focused on helping these students. The students benefited from hands-on teaching and a faculty who cared about them and their success in life and soon the students began to believe in themselves and the reality that they could make something of their lives.

Michael N. Castle

The faster you go, the more students you leave behind. It doesn't matter how much or how fast you teach. The true measure is how much students have learned.

William Glasser

Arriving to class late is disruptive of the learning process. I think that it is disrespectful to both the instructor and the students. I generally find a problem with students being tardy to my 9:10 a.m. class, in which students would come in thirty minutes late to this fifty minute class. I started locking my door at 9:15 second semester.

Patricia McCormick

Most teachers of self-discovery have two types of students. They have students they deal with in a more exoteric way than the esoteric students. Esoteric truths are presented to usually a smaller group of students.

Frederick Lenz

Teaching is a huge part of what I do. I love to think about what I do out loud, and the best way to do this is to teach. I usually learn a lot from the students in my workshops, because we work to build the classes around a collaborative environment where everyone is working towards the same goal of learning how to observe and see the subject well, because everyone brings different approaches and experiences with them, the other students and myself learn new methods that we can add into what we do.