There was a brilliant article by Alfie Kohn published in the New York Times, September 14, 2009:
It stresses what I call “respect for the mind” of young people.
Kohn’s writings are something that every teacher and parent should explore. He has been described in Time magazine as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores.”
Here are some excepts from the NYT article:
…the intriguing possibility that the problem with praise isn’t that it is done the wrong way — or handed out too easily, as social conservatives insist. Rather, it might be just another method of control, analogous to punishment. The primary message of all types of conditional parenting is that children must earn a parent’s love. A steady diet of that, Rogers warned, and children might eventually need a therapist to provide the unconditional acceptance they didn’t get when it counted.
… Before we toss out mainstream discipline, it would be nice to have some evidence. And now we do.
and
In practice … unconditional acceptance by parents as well as teachers should be accompanied by “autonomy support”: explaining reasons for requests, maximizing opportunities for the child to participate in making decisions, being encouraging without manipulating, and actively imagining how things look from the child’s point of view.
Imagine that!
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