Seattle Times: Should Learning Be its Own Reward?

katonahmom
Mon, 22 Jan 2007 12:01:59 +0000

stowmom, thanks for posting the Ohio News Network piece to the Case Western experiment - Superintendent Wade Lucas’ comment “If we can get one child to take intrinsic motivation and turn them into extrinsic motivators, then we’ve been successful” is certainly telling and controversial as far as these experiments go - as dmd points out in his post.

“Can cash motivate kids to learn?”
"While the thought of paying for good grades makes some parents squirm, others argue that monetary rewards mimic the real world, where economic incentives are used to motivate people. And anyway, they say, haven’t schools and colleges always handed out scholarships for academic achievement?

“For some kids money is a natural motivator,” Clay Watkins, a family therapist and director of the Village Counseling referral center in Arroyo Grande, Calif., wrote in an e-mail interview. “The more ways you can find to reinforce good behavior the better.”

But even for educators who approve of the practice, a lot depends on the spirit in which the reward is given. Is paying your child to do what you want positive reinforcement or plain old bribery? For Janet Bodnar, an expert on issues of children and money and author of Kiplinger’s “Dollars & Sense for Kids,” it’s a question of timing.

For example, the parents who paid their son $100 to learn the Gettysburg Address by heart and recite it on the first day of 6th grade were indulging in bribery. If the boy had done the exercise on his own and then been given the cash, that would have been different.

“It may seem like splitting hairs, but the former is an out-and-out bribe, while the latter is more of a reward,” Bodnar explained.

Even some schools have joined in upping the ante from the old system of handing out gold stars. Crestwood High School in Kentucky, for instance, offered students with good grades and attendance records the chance to enter a lottery and draw for a prize. The winner was 19-year-old Krystal Brooks, and her reward was nothing less than a bright yellow Ford Mustang worth $21,000.

School administrators cite pressures from programs like the No Child Left Behind Act, which bases school financing on children’s attendance and performance.

But experts in education and psychology seem to be divided about the benefits of using financial rewards. Some, such as Watkins, believe that paying children for doing well will encourage them to do even better.

“It has been and always will be one of the most effective strategies for raising positive and motivated boys or girls,” he said. “Most of the real world works the same way–we get punished when we do bad things and rewarded for doing good things.”

Gwynn Mettetal, at Indiana University in South Bend, agrees that money does motivate some children, but worries about the unintended side effects.

“Once children have been paid for doing something,” she wrote in a recent e-mail message, “whether making their bed or reading a book, they tend to expect payment every time.”

Research seems to bear this theory out. A study examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation published by Edward L. Deci, Richard Koestner and Richard M. Ryan in 1999 concluded that offering tangible rewards ultimately defeated the intended objective.

The study showed that once the rewards were removed, children became even less motivated than before the incentives were introduced.

“If you reward children for something they already enjoy, it tends to take the enjoyment out of it,” said Rheta DeVries, a professor of education at the University of Northern Iowa. “If you reward children for something they don’t enjoy doing, then it confirms for them that this is something that isn’t worth doing for its own sake.”

For Tighe Mullins, the cash he earned during the summer for reading books like “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Giver” has not, apparently, fostered a sustained interest in books. Since the cash deal ended, he hasn’t read a single book."