Friday, April 17, 2009

I'm becoming a fan of Alfie Kohn!

Here is a page with links to a bunch of articles that he has written:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/articles.htm#null
I read "The Folly of Merit Pay" (for teachers),
"Progressive Education" and
"Five Reasons to Stop Saying 'Good Job!'"

I can't wait to read some more!

2 comments:

Scorchi said...

Why shouldn't you say 'good job?' In the old days people said something like 'good boy.' And that was bad cause it made him think sometimes he must be a bad boy. But now you shouldn't tell someone they did a good job?

SillySlang said...

Same reason, really, it's passing judgement. They are less likely to repeat the good thing or to only do it to get praise and quit as soon as the praise ends.
There are other ways to acknowledge little children without turning them into a praise junkie.