Q. What is Alfie Kohn’s definition of a reward?
A. A reward is not just something nice or desired, it’s something nice or desired that is
offered contingently when someone complies with our wishes or does something we like.
Q. How are rewards and punishments unfavorable in the classroom according to Alfie
Kohn?
A. Both rewards and punishments are ways of manipulating behavior that destroy the
potential for real learning where students make choices about their learning and have
tasks of worth to explore.
Q. What does Alfie Kohn advocate instead of rewards and punishments?
A. He advocates providing an engaging curriculum and a caring atmosphere so the kids
can act on their natural desire to find out and learn.
Q. Educators are being taught, by Alfie, that punishment is not a very effective
motivating factor and neither are rewards, so what does he have to say about these two
factors being wrong?
A. He says that punishment is destructive. He says, that, “a number of people seem to
think if we call it “consequences” or insert the modifier “logical,” then it’s okay, but in
his eyes the phrase, “logical consequences” is an example of what he calls “punishment
lite,” a kinder, gentler way of doing things to children instead of working with them.
He says that rewards and punishments are both ways of manipulating behavior and
that there are two forms of doing things to students. All of the research that says it’s
counterproductive to say to students, “do this or here is what I’m going to do to you,”
also applies to saying, “do this and you’ll get that.”
Q. What does Alfie say about rewards being undesirable?
A. Alfie would say that the reason rewards are undesirable is that while students would
certainly like to have the goody itself (the pizza or money or gold star) none of us enjoys
having the very things we desire used as levers to control our behavior. So it’s the
contingency of the goody- “do this and you’ll get that” that accounts for its punitive
status over the long haul.
Q. Would he say that’s the case even for kids who find a certain task rewarding for it own
sake?
A. Yes, he would say that rewards are the most damaging to interests when the task is
already intrinsically motivating. If a student is already interested, great. But if he/she is
not, extrinsic rewards are not going to boost the interest level for these students.
Instead, the teacher needs to examine the task itself and the content of the curriculum to
see how it can be made more engaging. Regardless of what we do about it, though, one of
the most thoroughly researched findings in social psychology is that the more you reward
someone for doing something, the less interest that person will tend to have in whatever
he or she was rewarded to do.
Q. Does the book Punished by Rewards cite research about rewards being nonmotivating?
A. It does. Alfie Kohn says that there are many studies showing that extrinsic motivators
are not merely ineffective over the long haul but counterproductive with respect to the
things that concert us most: desire to learn, commitment to good values, and more. Other
studies show that when people are offered a reward for doing a task that involves some
degree of problem solving or creativity (or for doing it well) they will tend to do lower
quality work than those offered no reward.
Q. Since rewards seem so relevant to our everyday experience and everybody is used to
getting/giving rewards, educators often think that it’s only right to give rewards to kids
who do good things. Why does Alfie disagree?
A. He says that kids deserve to be in an engaging curriculum and caring atmosphere so
they can act on their natural desire to find out about stuff. He also says that no kid
deserves to be manipulated with extrinsics, as that would be making them comply with
what others want. He argues that educators used to word motivation in place of
compliance.
Q. Is it unrealistic to expect that all kids will find the entire curriculum intrinsically
motivating?
A. Alfie would say that a certain child is likely to be more interested in some things than
others, but that skillful teaching involves facilitating the process by which kids come to
grapple with complex ideas which should emerge from real-life interests and concerns of
the kids.
Teachers need to nurture the intrinsic motivation in their students by taking a look at
the problems with the task rather than with the child. When kids are able to work
cooperatively, design projects, and explore questions that interest them, then the teacher
is tapping and deepening the motivation that the students began with.
Q. If praise is not a tangible reward, is telling someone that he/she did a terrific job on
something like give a reward?
A. Kohn would say that positive feedback that is perceived as information is not in itself
destructive and can be quite constructive, and that encouragement or helping people feel
acknowledged is not a bad thing. However, most praise that is given to children takes the
form of a verbal reward, which can have the same destructive impact as other rewards: it
feels controlling, warps the relationship between the adult and the child, between the
child and his or her peers, and it undermines interest in the task itself.
Q. So what’s wrong with giving praise?
A. First, the teacher hasn’t done the student being praised any favors by pointing that
particular student out. Second, the teacher has just turned a learning experience into a
quest for triumph and introduced competition into the classroom. Third, the teacher is
pretending to speak to one student, but is really using the student to manipulate the
behavior of the other people in the room. Fourth, saying something like, “I like the way
Andrea is sitting so quietly” uses the expression I . The students then hear what the
teacher is demanding regardless of what reason the teacher may have for saying it. With
these four things combined, you have a reward-oriented classroom or a classroom
dominated by consequences where students ask, “What do they want me to do, and what
will I get for doing it?” or “What do they want me to do, and what will happen to me if I
don’t do it?” Lastly, praise is conditional: it says I’ll give you attention and support only
when you please me, when you meet my standards, and when you jump through my
hoops. Praise is also very judgmental.
Q. Do less successful students need more praise than other kids…even with the slightest
bit of progress?
A. Kohn would say that this praise does not help students develop a sense of competence,
no matter what the ability level. Instead, praise for success at relatively easy tasks sends a
message that this child must not be very bright. Children also are not helped to find the
material itself important or interesting if they are praised for doing it.
Q. Most people would criticize what Alfie Kohn has to say about rewards. What does he
say about that?
A. Alfie says, “A lots of people have had the experience of having done something just
because they loved it – until they started to get paid for doing it, after which they
wouldn’t dream of doing it again without getting paid.” This phenomenon shows that
extrinsic motivators cause intrinsic motivation to evaporate.
Q. So is recognizing any and all accomplishments bad?
A. Not necessarily. We all want to be appreciated, encouraged, and loved. We just need
to be recognized without turning into “praise junkies” that are then unable to think about
the worth of their own activities, actions, and products, and be totally dependent on
someone else to tell them they did a good job.
Q. Do rewards ever work?
A. Yes, rewards work in the short term and they are useful for getting exactly one thing:
temporary compliance. By bribing or threatening kids, you can get them to do what you
want as long as the reward or punishment keeps coming.
Q. So how do we stop giving rewards?
A. Realize that there are different kinds of motivation and stop asking, “How motivated
are my students?” and start asking, “How are my students motivated?”
It’s also important to recognize that there are three C’s of motivation, according to
Alfie Kohn; content, community, and choice. He says that where students are working
with one another in a caring environment to engage with interesting tasks that they have
some say in choosing- there is a place where you don’t need to use punishments or
rewards.