3 reasons to stop rewarding and punishing children

Teachers and schools make thousands of decisions, big and small, everyday. Just as we would hope that our doctors and hospitals are making decisions based on evidence and research, so should teachers and schools.

Should schools use rewards and punishments on their students?

Here are 3 reasons why schools and teachers need to stop using rewards and punishments:

1. We want children to do the right things for the right reasons. Too often rewards distract children from doing the right thing for the right reason. Instead of being virtuous and doing the right thing regardless of whether anyone is watching or waiting to catch them, too many children (and adults) will do good only when they stand to personally gain -- then we lament about why some children (and adults) become grade grubbers, praise junkies and bribe bait. We can't teach children to do the right thing with carrots and sticks. We want children to share and adults to slow down in playground zones not because they might get caught -- and yet when we reward and punish children to do the right thing, we teach them to look over their shoulder before they do good or bad.

2. There are two kinds of motivation: intrinsic & extrinsic. The problem here is that we need to stop asking ‘How motivated are my students?’ and start asking ‘How are my students motivated?’. Motivation is not a single entity that you either have a lot or little of. There are two kinds: intrinsic and extrinsic. If you are intrinsically motivated then you are doing something for its own sake; if you are extrinsically motivated, you are driven to do something, or not do something, based on a reward or punishment that may be waiting for you. But that is not even the interesting part—the real catch here is that these two kinds of motivation tend to be inversely related. When you grow students' extrinsic motivation by bribing them (or threatening them), you run the risk of growing their extrinsic motivation while their intrinsic love for what you want them to learn shrivels. Rewards can only ever gain short-term compliance from students when what we really desire is their authentic engagement.

3. To a child, an adult's praise and presents are cheap -- it's our presence that they value the most. There is absolutely nothing wrong with recognizing children -- problems occur, however, when our recognition is manipulative and controlling. Too often the children we deem the most undeserving of our recognition and attention are those who need us the most -- too often rewards and punishments rupture our relationships with children. My teaching and parenting mantra is borrowed directly from Jerome Bruner who once said that, "Children should experience success and failure not as reward and punishment but as information". This mindset lays the foundation for shifting away from doing things to children and moving towards working with them.

Further reading:

Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn

Why we do What we do? by Edward Deci

Drive by Daniel Pink

Testsandgrades and teachers

Killing community with token economies

A few years ago, I wrote a post on Primitive Moral Development: PBIS, where I described a school that had teachers pass out green and red tickets for catching students being good and bad.

Here is a comment left by Julie:

My son's third grade teacher implemented a "positive rewards" behavior management plan that spiraled out of control and ended up creating a huge problem for her and for the kids. She too, gave tickets to students she saw doing "good" things or acting in ways she approved of. The kids were smart enough to start doing more of these "good things" in front of her just to earn a ticket. This program taught them to be sly, sneaky and manipulate around the teacher, but she was too caught up in the rules of the program to notice or even care.

The tickets became valuable currency in the classroom, because at the end of the month, an auction was held where students could use their accumulated tickets to buy toys and treats. Sadly, it was a real auction where those with the most tickets and those who shouted the loudest bought the most candy and prizes. 

As the year progressed, tickets were hotly sought after and thefts began to occur. Tickets began to disappear from lockers, desks and backpacks and kids began to argue and accuse each other. Fights on the playground broke out over lost and stolen tickets. Students formed alliances and groups to put their tickets together for more buying power at the auctions.
Behavior in the classroom deteriorated as more and more focus and time was put on the damn tickets. The teacher grew frustrated and was short tempered with the kids. The kids competed with each, fiercely and without compassion, to "earn" their ticket currency. The auctions became tense, ugly affairs with students shouting each other down and crying when they failed to buy what they wanted. My son was stressed out, anxious, and hated being in that atmosphere. 

The classroom had formed it's own little economy and it was ugly. We talked to the teacher to express our concerns and were told not to worry -- that this was what the real world was like, that competition reigned, and that our son was too sensitive. She also suggested we put him into a competitive sports program to "toughen him up."

Rewarding & punishing students for test scores

An Orange County High School was using a student ID colour-coding scheme to visibly rank and sort students according to their scores on standardized tests. The Orange Country Register reports:

Kennedy High School in La Palma is requiring students to carry school ID cards in one of three colors based on their performance on the California Standards Tests – black, gold or white – plus a spiral-bound homework planner with a cover of a matching color. The black card, which is the highest level, and the gold card give students a range of special campus privileges and discounts, while the white card gives students no privileges and forces them to stand in a separate cafeteria lunch line.

There is so much wrong with this that I'm not sure where to start... but here goes:

• Students should experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information. Psychological research tells us that there are two kinds of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. Not only are there two different kinds of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic, but they also tend to be inversely related. That is, when one grows, the other tends to shrink. Because of this, adults have no business ever prying on their children's extrinsic motivation to learn. Also keep in mind that this was both a reward and punishment system; the absence of the reward is the punishment (the stick is hidden in the carrot). If we wanted to extinguish a student's love for learning, I could not devise a better program than this.

• Sometimes with the best intentions, schools end up doing questionable things in the name of raising achievement. When achievement is code for high scores and increasing achievement means nothing more than test scores are low make them go up, reward and punishment schemes like this are as predictable as they are destructive. Ultimately there are two problems with tests: right answers don't necessarily signal understanding and wrong answers don't necessarily signal its absence.  Because tests measure what matters least and often encourage a narrowing of the curriculum and test preparation, low scores on tests is nothing to be ashamed of and high scores are nothing to be proud of. So even if this colour-coded caste system scheme did increase test scores, this at best provides us with no useful information about the school and at worst tells us the school's priorities are about raising scores not raising children. In other words, the goal is as flawed as the method.

• The trouble with this approach is that it intensifies the damage our obsession with testing is doing. Anthony Cody writes about this on his blog where he explains that through branding and labelling a student's worth is literally defined by testsandgrades in such a way that the majority of the children are relegated to a subclass. Cody explains that the quality of a student's learning should never be reduced to a few test scores because the tests can't tell us what we ask of them. Real learning is messy - standardized tests are nothing if not infinitely tidy. See the problem? Or as Alfie Kohn puts it, "I've come to realize that standardized tests serve mostly to make dreadful forms of teaching appear successful."

• Those who decided on this policy may not know anything about eugenics or believe in eugenic principles, but this policy is what a eugenicist would do, under conditions a eugenicist would have endorsed. This is what David B. Cohen wrote about in his post Eugenic Legacies Still Influence Education where he makes the point that this ranking and ordering of students served absolutely no useful educational value. The stratification and segregation of students does nothing but endorse a caste system. While I can see why schools might want to educate student's on what a caste system is - this is not even remotely the same as suggesting we should immerse children in one.

• Campbell's Law tells us that the more any one indicator (such as test scores) are used for decision making, the more that indicator will suffer from corruption, therefore, bastardizing the very processes it was meant to monitor. We can bemoan this inconvenience all we want. We can play the blame game until we are blue in the face, but it won't change a damn thing. We can no more successfully ignore this social science law than we could ignore a law like gravity. 

Since this story broke, the California school district has chosen to discontinue some elements of the incentive plan including the removal of the colour-coded binders and student IDs. They also noted that the incentives of a public nature, such as different lunch lines, would be no longer used. While some may see this as a victory, I don't. The school district has already pledged to create a similar but less public way of rewarding and punishing their students via test scores. This tells me that the only thing they deemed inappropriate about their incentive program was that it was too public and they got caught.

I guess what I'm really saying is that bad stuff will return if it isn't rejected for being bad... and this is bad.

Heightened control

Despite what conventional wisdom tells us, heightened control and demands for obedience are the worst responses to defiance.

Where there's no relationship, there's no trust.

Where there's no trust, we resort to manipulation and dictates. Compliance and obedience become the name of the game, and for most kids this spells disaster.

Education deform is dehumanizing

A better rule book with better rule-followers won't make anything better.

A better curriculum with better tests will never make schools better.

Education deform is built around dehumanizing the education system by propping up content-bloated, prefabricated, highly prescribed curriculums that are married to punitive, high stakes standardized tests that are quickly followed by the reinforcements. We are all choking on carrots or sore from sticks - either way, most of us are either too drunk on incentives or scared shitless to stand up and question school deformers.

Those who present a healthy dose of skepticism about what is generally taken on faith as the best way to improve schools (read: prescribed curriculums and standardized tests) are put in their place with the kind of efficiency that would make the likes of Benito Mussolini proud.

I don't have all the answers for authentic education reform, but I do know this: getting all teachers and all students to simply teach and learn the curriculum so that they can achieve high test scores won't improve a damn thing. To think otherwise reminds me of an old saying: "For every problem there is a solution that is simple, elegant and wrong." Good teaching and real learning are far too complex for what a silly, over-simplified solution such as standardization can offer.

A teacher who teaches curriculum well with students who test out proficient can no more call themselves teachers and learners than someone who simply follows a trail can call themselves an outdoorsman.

The sooner we can come to this realization the better because our kids can't wait.

Should students be paid to learn?

The National Journal posted the question "should students be paid to learn?" to their panel of insiders. Here is Alfie Kohn's response:

Alfie Kohn (www.alfiekohn.org), author of Punished by Rewards andThe Schools Our Children Deserve, submitted the following:

Rewards, like punishments, can produce only one thing: temporary obedience. What they can never do is help kids become more effective or enthusiastic learners. In fact, a huge body of research demonstrates that exactly the opposite is true: Dangling carrots in front of people is actually counterproductive.

What the data show, more specifically, is that the more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward. To understand why, it helps to realize that the meaningful question isn’t “Will rewards motivate kids?” but “What kind of motivation do rewards create?” And the answer is: “A motivation to get more rewards.” Unfortunately, that tends to reduce their motivation to learn.

Psychologists distinguish between intrinsic motivation, in which the learning itself is seen as meaningful, and extrinsic motivation, in which the learning becomes just a means to an end. That end could be money, grades, stickers, or any other incentive. More than 75 studies have shown that extrinsic and intrinsic motivation aren't just different; they tend to be inversely related.

Thus, for example, kids who are led to focus on grades -- the reward of an A – are apt to think in a more superficial fashion, prefer easier tasks, and find learning less interesting when you compare them to kids in classrooms where grades are absent or invisible. Paying kids for good grades is basically a reward for a reward. It doubles the damage.

The bottom line is that dangling incentives in front of children is a way of doing things to them. It’s a form of sugar-coated control. In the long run people react badly to being controlled, even if they like the goody itself. In fact, the bigger or more desirable the reward, the more damage it tends to do, according to the research.

But in the case of initiatives like Fryer’s, the news is even worse. To this point I’ve just been addressing the method: How do we get kids to do something? My contention is that, apart from the inherently objectionable nature of carrot-and-stick control, rewards are ineffective at best (for producing anything beyond temporary compliance) and harmful at worst – even if the goal is laudable. But in these programs, the goal isn’t to help students love learning or think more deeply. The goal is just to raise scores on bad tests to make the adults look good. Standardized exams, as I and others have explained elsewhere, measure what matters least. We even have studies that demonstrate a statistically significant negative correlation between deep thinking, on the one hand, and results on a range of standardized tests, on the other. So what you’ve got with these cash-for-scores programs is a flawed means married to a terrible objective – the worst of both worlds.

One reason adults are so fond of reward programs is that they’re spared from having to ask why kids have to be bribed in the first place. What would it take to create a school where kids want to show up? How can we nourish kids’ natural curiosity and desire to learn? What does it say about homework that children dread doing it and rarely find it of value? To answer those questions, to make school meaningful for students, takes time and talent and courage. But you don’t need any of those things to toss kids a goodie when they jump through your hoops. Such programs are powerfully conservative in that they discourage us from changing the status quo.

Finally, four quick responses to arguments offered by proponents:

Q. Shouldn’t we do anything to help kids who are desperately poor and trapped in bad schools?

A. We should do what’s likely to help. Bribing students to raise standardized test scores does absolutely nothing to address the real problems – social, economic, or educational. To the extent that it leads kids to see academics as just a tedious prerequisite to snagging some cash, it devalues the very thing we want to help them become excited about – and therefore worsens their plight.

Q. Shouldn’t we wait for evidence and see if these programs work?

A. First, there have been enough studies of similar incentive programs so that it’s pretty clear by now that they don’t work – certainly not in the long run, and certainly not with respect to outcomes that matter. Second, there are many more studies of rewards in general – and an impressive body of theoretical work in the field of motivational psychology -- that provide the context for understanding why such programs can’t work.

Q. Why not use rewards to jump-start kids’ interest, then fade them out so facilitate a transition to interest in the learning itself?

A. If only it were so simple! Unfortunately, as soon as you introduce an extrinsic inducement – a reward as a reason for doing something -- you affect the way students look at learning, at the people offering the reward, and at their own reasons for doing what they do. It then becomes more difficult to promote – or recover – intrinsic motivation than it was to begin with.

Q. Lots of affluent kids get financial rewards from their parents. Why not offer the same to inner-city kids?

A. First, I’ve never seen a speck of data to support this rather dubious claim about the supposed pervasiveness of financial incentives in the suburbs. Second, even if we grant that some rich parents are bribing their kids to bring home high grades or test scores, how is that an argument for doing it to poor kids, too, if it doesn’t make sense for anyone? Third, it’s one thing for individual parents to use these tactics on their children, but something else again for schools and public officials to officially endorse this kind of manipulation.

Also, notice that the most controlling classroom management and school discipline programs – carrots and sticks to enforce obedience – are far more likely to be imposed on low-income kids of color. That’s the real context in which to understand this latest version of “do what we say and we’ll give you a doggie biscuit.” If anything, given the structural and attitudinal obstacles facing poor children, we should be going out of our way to support their autonomy and critical sensibilities, working with them to solve problems. This kind of program does exactly the opposite and amounts to a plan for doing things to them so they’ll do what they’re told.

Chris Wejr on The Price of Grades

Chris Wejr wrote a fantastic post where he reflected on an article that explained how Aboriginal students were being offered cash incentives for their grades.

Chris asks a number of provocative questions that challenge the conventional "common sense" behind bribing children for their academic achievement (read as grades).

Here is one of my favorite parts from his post:

I have taught grade 1 through grade 12 and as they grow older, many students seem to lose their sense of curiosity and learning – a primary student has yet to ask me, “Is this for marks?`while this is a common question in most high school classes.

So what happens to this inquisitive learning nature in children? Why do some feel the need to have to resort to bribing students into doing well at school? As students move up through the system, the societal and educational focus shifts from learning to grades and from the child to the curriculum. Some of the teachers at our school have stated that they would love to just teach what is meaningful to their students but they are pressured from society and the Ministry of Education to define student learning in the form of a single letter or number. Too, they feel pressure to make sure they get through the mandated curriculum.

Why is it that as children grow up, we narrow our definition of school? I find it odd that we tend to accept the idea that very young children, even toddler's, need to develop their whole selves - and yet, when children reach school age, we suddenly forget that children have other body parts other than their heads.

This reminds me of an excerpt from Sir Ken Robinson's book The Element:

The other big influence on education has been the academic culture of universities, which has tended to push aside any sort of activity that involves the heart, the body, the senses, and a good portion of our actual brains.

The result is that school systems everywhere inculcate us with a very narrow view of intelligence and capacity and overvalue particular sorts of talent and ability. In doing so, they neglect others that are just as important, and they disregard the relationships between them in sustaining the vitality of our lives and communities. This stratified, one-size-fits-all approach to education marginalizes all of those who do not take naturally to learning this way. 

I think we can probably mostly agree that school has too narrow of a definition of success. What if the kids disengagement is a message we need to listen to? What if they are trying to tell us just how alienated and marginalized traditional school has made them feel?

Even if we can agree that there is a problem, what we can't seem to agree on is how to solve it.

For example, here is a comment left by Rebekah (comment #25) on Chris Wejr's post:

I think it’s naive to say that extrinsic motivation isn’t ultimately authentic. How many of us would show up at work every day if we didn’t get paid? Without money as a motivator, our entire economic system falls apart. Given that our school district’s mission statement is “to develop responsible citizens through appropriate academic, career and social programs”, it seems that the economic aspect of motivation is valid (i.e., we want our students to grow up to contribute to society by having paying jobs). When I worked in Watts (L.A.), one of the biggest challenges we faced was students who had no hope. They gave up because of academic frustration, social fear, and economic hopelessness. Extrinsic motivators worked as a bridge for those kids. If we could give them a reason to try, we could often make them see what they were capable of, and they would begin to hope. Only then could we work on building intrinsic motivation for learning.

If our premise is to solve the problem of disengagement by manipulating and forcing engagement, we are ignoring why kids are disengaged in the first place. Arguing over the implementation of incentives to coerce children to achieve is a massive exercise in missing the point. Before asking how we can get kids engaged in the current school system, we must investigate what we are asking them to in engage in, and why we want them to do so. For example, in the case of Canada's Aboriginals, history shows us that there are some very good reasons why school has in fact been harmful.

At some point, we need to admit that the number of children who choose to vote with their feet and disengage from school is less of a problem with the kids and more of an indictment of the system. And manipulating kids to reconcile themselves to a system that may be broken or irrelevant is likely to do more harm than good.

Treating Kids Like Pets

When teachers or parents make success, rewards, gifts, excellence, treats, fun, grades or opportunities artificially scarce, we alienate and marginalize the very children who need us the most.

When teachers and parents treat kids like pets by bribing and threatening them in an attempt to garnish control, children start to see the adults in their lives less as safe and caring allies and more like judges in-waiting. In other words, kids learn that it is in their best interest to keep their distance from these adults.

Manipulation that is driven by bribes and threats is built on a foundation of conditional acceptance; that is, one person uses power over another to garnish compliance. All relationships are eroded by such treatment. That means the adult-child relationship is poisoned as much as the relationship between one child and another.

Want proof?

Did you see how the red-headed child looked at the adult? We probably can all imagine how little the child thinks of the ice-cream man, but did you see how that same boy looked at the new boy? If looks could kill...

Behavior systems based on rewards and punishment pit children against their peers as much as they pit children against adults. In an age when we should truly understand that good teaching and good learning are inseparable from good relationships, far too many teachers and parents are willing to sacrifice their long-term goals in favor of short-term compliance.

What's more, we should all understand how a classroom built upon collaboration and cooperation is infinitely more productive than one built on competition. Alfie Kohn explains:

The central message of all competition is that other people are potential obstacles to one's own success. Competition creates envy for winners, contempt for losers, and hostility and suspicion toward just about everyone. Not only is it irrational to help someone whose success might require your failure, but competition creates a climate in which such help is unlikely to occur in any case. Researchers have found that competitive structures reduce generosity, empathy, sensitivity to others' needs, accuracy of communication, and trust. These results follow naturally and logically from competition itself; the problem does not rest with the individuals involved and the way they approach a contest. Moreover, contests between teams teach that the only reason to work with others is to defeat another group of people who are working together. Cooperation becomes the means; victory is the end.

Bribes, threats, rewards and punishments are built on manipulation, and manipulation is built on mistrust. If we are to truly believe in our children and their pursuit of life long learning, we have aspire to something better than this.

Learning as a chore

Token economies and other rewards systems are prevalent in schools and families. The belief being that a kind of behavioural bait-and-switch can be used to encourage or reinforce students to achieve anything from reading,  to doing their times tables or cleaning their room.

In his book Predictably Irrational, Behavioral Economist Dan Ariely describes an experiment he conducted with his students. He started by reading a few lines from Walt Witman's Leaves of Grass:

After closing the book, I told the students that I would be conducting three readings from Walt Witman's Leaves of Grass that Friday evening; one short, one medium, and one long. Owing to limited space, I told them, I had decided to hold an auction to determine who could attend. I passed out sheets of paper so that they could bid for a space; but before they did so, I had a question to ask them.

I asked half the students to write down whether, hypothetically, they would be willing to pay me $10 for a 10 minute poetry recitation. I asked the other half to write down whether, hypothetically, they would be willing to listen to me recite poetry for ten minutes if I paid them $10.

This, of course, served as the anchor. Now I asked the students to bid for a spot at my poetry reading. Do you think the initial anchor influenced the ensuing bids?

Before I tell you, consider two things. First, my skills at reading poetry are not of the first order. So asking someone to pay me for 10 minutes of it could be considered a stretch. Second, even though I asked half of the students if they would pay me for the privilege of attending the recitation, they didn't have to bid that way. They could have turned the tables completely and demanded that I pay them.

And now to the results (drum roll, please). Those who answered the hypothetical question about paying me were indeed willing to pay me for the privilege. They offered, on average, to pay me about a dollar for the short poetry reading, about two dollars for the medium poetry reading, and a bit more than three dollars for the medium poetry reading, and a bit more than three dollars for the long poetry reading. (Maybe I could make a living outside academe after all.)

But what about those who were anchored to the though of being paid (rather than paying me)? As you might expect, they demanded payment: on average, they wanted $1.30 to listen the short poetry reading, $2.70 to listen to the medium poetry reading, and $4.80 to endure the long poetry reading.

With simple manipulation, Dan Ariely was able to arbitrarily make an ambiguous experience into a pleasurable or painful one. Without ever hearing Ariely's poetry reading skills (or lack there of), their first impressions were formed based on whether they were asked to pay or be paid.
Dan Ariely concludes:

The die was cast, and the anchor was set. Moreover, once the first decision had been made, other decisions followed in what seemed to be a logical and coherent manner. The students did not know whether listening to me recite poetry was a good or bad experience, but whatever their first decision was, they used it as input for their subsequent decisions and provided a coherent pattern of responses across the three poetry readings.

Reward systems that bribe kids to learn implant a dangerous anchor. What if kids come to see learning as a mere means to an end? What if they see learning as something to only engage in if the conditions are profitable?

To further make his point, Ariely quotes Mark Twain:

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

What if all of our extrinsic manipulators, whether they be exorbitant rewards or ghastly punishments, are herding kids to anchor learning in as an obligation - something they ideally would never need or want to engage in?

We need to think long and hard on bait-and-switch systems that frame learning as a chore.

We may be doing far greater harm than we could ever imagine.

Mistrust drives manipulation

Superiors are there to support you not dictate you.

Seth Godin writes about turning the traditional top-down power structure up-side down:

I always took the position that my boss (when I had a job) worked for me. My job was to do the thing I was hired to do, and my boss had assets that could help me do the job better. His job, then, was to figure out how best give me access to the people, systems and resources that would allow me to do my job the best possible way.


Of course, that also means that the people I hire are in charge as well. My job isn't to tell them what to do, my job is for them to tell me what to do to allow them to keep their promise of delivering great work.

If you go into work on Monday with a list of things for your boss to do for you (she works for you, remember?) what would it say? What happens if you say to the people you hired, "I work for you, what's next on my agenda to support you and help make your [learning] go up?"

Today's test and punish brand of accountability have left teachers deprofessionalized in a pool of distrust. I've come to know far too many teachers who are numb to top-down, teacher-proofing reform. For them, education reform has become a shopping list of dictates and demands, and so many teachers have come to see their principal or their superintendent as their superior who tells them what to do.

When I hear of school districts that mandate teacher's professional development, I am not surprised to also see their teachers disengaged from their own learning. Undert this climate, everyone comes to see professional development as this thing to just get through.

When interactions between teachers and administrators become more about power, things go awry. Harriet Rubin, a legendary innovator in the world of business-book publishing, sums this up when she said: "Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash."


When you don't trust someone, you resort to controlling and manipulating them.

Mistrust drives manipulation.

In his Harvard Business Review blog, Bill Taylor writes:

So much of how we think about strategy, competition, and management remains centered on the zero-sum logic of amassing power: For me to win, you must lose. But almost anything that's hopeful and positive about business today is premised on spreading freedom — inviting all sorts of people, inside and outside your organization, to contribute ideas, improve your products and services, and otherwise have a voice and a seat at the table that they never used to have. For leaders, the most important question today is not How many people or departments or business units do you control? It is How much energy and participation have you unleashed?

Education reform should be less about compliance and more about ingenuity. If the teachers in the field aren't affored the opportunity to influence administration without appearing to be troublemakers, reform is destined to fail a thousand deaths.
Education reform must be less about control and more about collaboration. We would be wise to listen to Dan Pink when he speaks of autonomy, mastery and purpose.

We would also be wise to ponder Thomas Gordon's message:

The more you use power to try to control people, the less real influence you'll have on their lives.

For teachers, Gordon's words act as a kind of double-edged sword. Just as teachers have a need for collaboration with their administrators, so must teachers collaborate with their students.

This isn't a teacher thing - it's a human being thing.

Bait and Switch

I write a lot about radically altering how we interact with children. There is a big difference between working with children and doing things to them. You could choke a horse with the sheer number of reward and punishment based programs that have infected our schools and homes.

Some teachers and parents believe in using rewards or punishments in an attempt to encourage initial interest in something.

While these videos are far from definitive evidence for abolishing behvaiour programs, I think you can appreciate how the manipulated feels toward to the manipulator.





These kids wear their feelings of disgust and disapproval on their faces in plain view. But how many times do kids walk away from interactions with manipulating parents and teachers and never show their true feelings for us?

We can try and tinker with these bait and switch programs; we could fill conferences discussing whether we start with the big red toy truck and wean kids off to the cardboard cut-out or start with the plastic horse and graduate to the real one - but this all misses the point.


I'm not prepared to gamble with the relationships I have with my students or daughter to gain some kind of compliance.

Are you?