"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 r..."
- 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..."
"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..."
"Like any other tool for facilitating the completion of a questionable task, rewards offer a "how" answer to what is really a "why" question."
"How well you do things should be incidental, not integral, to the way you regard yourself."
"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 paren..."
"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...."
"Historians have shown that "parents in the Middle Ages worried about their kids no less than we worry about ours today," and by the nineteenth century there is evidence of bars being placed on windows..."
"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."
"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..."