Punished by Rewards

I'm writing this post because I got starting replying to Willa's post on the same subject, and realized I was hogging her comments box, when I already had a place to do that over here ;-). She was talking about Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards, a book she's read called Sway, and generally discussing extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation.

I read Alfie Kohn's book when I first started homeschooling, and it has had a big effect on how I have done things, not because I thought Kohn was an authority to be followed (I am a skeptical reader), but simply because I saw that he was largely right where my own homeschool was concerned. So whenever possible, I tried to help C.Z. see why it was worth doing what I asked her to do, and to give her an age-appropriate amount of autonomy. It probably also helped somewhat that she wasn't even very motivated by incentives, and that I couldn't keep their intricacies straight myself, so it usually wasn't even worth the trouble for me to offer a reward. This isn't to say that we never had any structure, but it was usually routine-based, not external. Even so, it was sometimes extremely hard to motivate intrinsically when most people I knew were using rewards. They got more immediate results than I did, naturally! (Or more to the point, not naturally.)

Seven years later, I think I am starting to see the fruits of intrinsic learning. I don't want to make this all about what my child does, but she's the sort who will look me right in the eye and refuse an offer of a class with all her best friends in it if she doesn't like the subject. She has amazing self-confidence and resolve in choosing her own goals--just the sort of thing that used to drive me crazy when she was eight! And it's not all achievement-oriented, either. She doesn't worry too much about rankings and prizes in music school, and was shocked when she got first chair in her violin section last year (but she loved the responsibility). 

Frankly, I think extrinsically motivated kids are more susceptible to peer pressure, and are more entertainment-driven. And C.Z. does, too, and she tells me this now that she's around other school kids. We're not perfect either, of course. Nor do we want to be. I don't know how it will play out when she's an adult, but I do know that the lesson of intrinsic motivation took--with a vengeance!  Now whether I emphasized this method because I saw how she was, or whether she's that way because I emphasized this method, it's hard to say, but it's done now.  

As both Sway and Punished by Rewards mention, we do occasionally "celebrate" milestones, often after the fact. I see nothing wrong with that, because it becomes a happy family memory that shows that we appreciate one another, not a calculating sort of goal.  

One more thing: I think that much modern school is about managing workload more than it's about learning itself. This does present something of a dilemma to the parent who wants to teach intrinsic motivation. Sometimes I'm tempted to worry a bit about what would happen if C.Z. decided to go to high school (not likely), or what will happen when she goes to college (likely). She'll have to take classes in subjects that she doesn't like, and not delve so deeply into the few real interests, at least until she reaches her upper level courses. I'm counting on the fact that by the time she goes to college, she'll understand how these "required" courses fit into her overall goals, and that will be motivation enough. Also, she may simply opt for a music conservatory, though I am frankly talking up a liberal arts course, at least for now. At the moment, it's a bit tough to motivate for, say, Latin. About the only motivation she has is me sitting there with her, and even that doesn't work very well. Naturally, I'm trying to help her see why I think Latin is worth the trouble, and hoping that it will catch on. And yes, of course that's a hard thing to do!

If you're reading this and getting a bit worried right now because you're thinking, "My kid would never do that! I have to use rewards!" Well, I don't know, because I only know our family, but I will offer two possible explanations: 

One is contained in Discover Your Child's Learning Style, by Mariaemma Willis and Victoria Kindle Hodson. According to this book, there are five learning styles, and one of them is Producer. I suspect that Producers are the kind of learners that are most easily motivated by rewards, and my daughter and I have almost no "Producing" in our dispositions, so that could partially explain us. We are almost entirely "Inventing" and "Thinking/Creating." Have some sympathy for us, because we get very bored at the thought of having to check off lists as a form of motivation (we do use lists as simple organization tools and exterior memory, of course), and we realize that we are living in a world run by Producers, because that's what Producers do--run things. (Not that we particularly care!)  

When our family took the learning styles inventory in the book, we found to our surprise that Bob was a raging Producer. (And also an Inventor, thankfully, because that gives us all a common modus operandi.) Hmm, might that explain the obsession he has with scores, running times and numbers? With making decisions? But...even Bob agrees with Alfie Kohn and thinks that rewards are punishments. Bob sets his own goals for Production, and achieving them is its own reward. He doesn't like anyone else coming up with his goals for him, thank you!

My other explanation is simply, are you intrinsically motivated? Do you see the point, or have the desire to teach that learning is its own reward? I'm not going to tell you what to think, of course! That would be totally against the point! (I'm laughing, because I am easily amused by the absurd!) But before you tell me that you can't (I'm saying this because I've had people tell me this to my face, more than once), do be honest with yourself for a minute and ask whether you even want to, and if you don't, why you don't. It might be simply that you haven't thought about it, or that it would be sort of a pain to shift gears, or that you think managing a workload is a more important lesson than the work itself, or any number of other reasons. And once you ask yourself these questions, you'll know why you're motivated the way you are, and that's something worth knowing.