Extrinsic Rewards and Motivation

Giving a grade causes students to learn to be teacher-pleasers. They find out what the teachers want, do exactly that, and get nothing out of the experience. Call me a hypocrite, but that is how I got through elementary, middle and high school... and most of one graduate degree. My transcripts are impeccable. Did I do the learning I was supposed to be doing? Absolutely not. I just wanted the A, the meaningless prize for doing what the teacher liked.

From the Target 'Take Charge of Education' Campaign

Have you ever had a teacher tell you that what you are doing isn't going to be on the test? Did you still study it? Your answer will tell you whether or not you have suffered the ill-effects of an extrinsic reward system. Have you ever studied or researched something just for fun? Why is that? Which things make you smarter, the ones that get you the A or the ones you studied because you want to?

The student with the A isn't necessarily smarter, just as the child who is forced to say "sorry" isn't always sorry. Just because the child has gone through the motions doesn't mean they have gained anything from the experience.

Students who learn for the sake of learning don't always get the best grades. Their work might look different from the next child's work. They do the work because it satisfies something that their brains need to do to learn. In addition, a student who is able to choose how to right a wrong will better be able to express genuine regret and compassion for others. There doesn't really need to be an extrinsic reward or punishment to instill these values.

"The prize and the punishment are incentives towards unnatural of forced effort, and therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them." --Maria Montessori in The Montessori Method

Read! Win Pizza!

Why on Earth are students given pizza parties for learning? Why are teachers given bonuses for high test scores? Is it because students and teachers hate school and can't be motivated in another way? Whatever happened to personal satisfaction and internal motivation?

Maria Montessori knew that motivation to learn could easily be stoked by allowing choice and making learning interesting. Though extrinsic rewards work in the short term, the long-term result is disinterest in learning. Angeline Stoll Lillard argues, in Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius, that rewards cause learners to lose motivation for learning because they encourage more shallow thinking. In an open-ended opportunity, it is harder to know what the teacher is looking for in order to earn the reward and the student loses motivation (p. 157). Graded students across the globe are doing as little as possible to get the desired grade. You know what I'm talking about because you have done it.

All is not lost. Good people can do better if they are striving to earn that reward. The valedictorian of the high school class is no doubt working hard and is motivated by something. But, Lillard argues that the better students would do their best if the reward wasn't ever even there (p. 160). What if students weren't told exactly what to do? What if they were just expected to follow their own paths and be great at what they are interested in? Wouldn't this increase their idea of their own self-worth? Take pride in their own amazing talents? Too crazy? Montessori has been doing it for 104 years.

Am I being a Pollyanna again? I don't think so. I would just like to merely suggest that rewards and punishments may be one way in which the widely accepted method of education is broken.

I think that grades are an often unavoidable aspect of the education system. So are suspensions. So, the best way for teachers and parents to combat this is to make sure that students get some kind of helpful feedback on what they have done. Notice the areas of strength. Notice how it could have been made better. Give them an opportunity to fix it or develop the needed skills. Montessori believed in mastery learning, not "you got an 82 percent and that ain't bad" learning. She gave students an opportunity to go back and try it again, maybe in a different way, so they could learn the foundations of an idea before moving onto more difficult concepts. Students with learning goals do better than students with performance goals (Lillard, p. 170). So how do you reconcile this with grades? You might be thinking, does everyone work until they all get an A?

Well here's my last question: Why do you care about the A?