Should Teachers Avoid Using Extrinsic Motivation ("Bribes") ?

School Days, school days
Dear old golden rule days
Readin' and 'ritin' and 'rithmetic
Taught to the tune of the hickory stick
(Music by Gus Edwards; Lyrics by Will D. Cobb, 1907)

Dear old golden rule days! Hah! The tune of a hickory stick was often accompanied by a crying soloist, or even a chorale of weeping. That's nostalgia!

My ideal school would be something along the lines of A.S. Neill's Summerhill: no compulsion whatsoever, students would attend classes when and if they find them intrinsically motivating, no adversive extrinsic motivators would be employed to "keep them in line."

Alas, in my 50 years of professional engagement (25 in public schools) with learners at all levels I regret to say that Summerhill was not even a remotely considered model of schooling to be found (or desired, especially by most parents who could afford it.)

Should extrinsic motivators be used in the classroom? Yes, if you know what they are and how long they will be effective; if you can afford them and if you need them.

There is no moral issue here that has not already been foreclosed on by parents or school boards. Kids come in to school having been trained with extrinsic motivators most of their young lives, e.g. "no TV until you eat your peas," or "Absences from school will lower your grades, no matter what your test average." What intrinsic motivators they might still have at entry will soon be disabled by the regimentation of school procedures, or for the convenience of their adult caretakers.

So before we start -- as many suggest -- proscribing the use of extrinsic motivators from schools let's consider the following issues:


1. (to repeat) students come to school acculturated to, indeed, expecting to be offered extrinsic motivators (and usually knowing how to exploit them);

2. Schools, especially public schools, are compulsory and regimented, no matter that the iron fist is usually concealed in the "humanistic" velvet glove of professional "attitude adjusters"; this affects motivation substantially.

3. People, including kids, are individuals with intrinsic interests that vary both in object, in intensity and in duration. Such interests are not easily summoned on command. But mass education demands uniformity and regularity.

Important to consider is that extrinsic motivators can be skillfully used to bring students to acquire new intrinsic interests if older ones are seen as inappropriate to the schoolroom. In addition, extrinsic motivators plug in the gaps where intrinsic motivation is too varied, too weak or too intermittant to carry students through the curriculum.

But eschewing extrinsic approaches -- as faddists would now have it -- would preclude learning teaching skills using such approaches.

Educators would not be in the schools for very long but for the extrinsic motivators they receive. Nor would many adults be in their places of employment lacking extrinsic motivation. (Even with extrinsic motivation, teachers quit their jobs at 12-13% per year.)

Why should children be denied motivators which adults expect? I suspect there is little more to the prejudice against extrinsic motivators than the unrealistic hope, usually hidden, that the kids can be made to walk paths straight and narrow to make up for the prodigalities of parents and community.

For references and to examine these issues further, see The Evils of Public Schools



Cordially, 
EGR

Educational NewSpeak

Hate is Love. War is Peace --1984 George Orwell

Schooling in the U.S. is compulsory: kids are constrained to be in school. If you’ve got money, you can buy more or less comfortable incarceration for your kids between the ages 6 to 16, unless you school them at home – in which case you share the constraints.

The big pretense of course is that everyone, just everyone, down to the last child, wants, nay, ardently desires to be in school, even if it means getting up at the crack of dawn and riding a bus for an hour just so you can begin pretending to show interest whilst you tighten your sphincters until such time as permission is given to permit nature its course.

This is why we school people talk funny. Basically, we force a happy grin to keep from breaking down into tears. Any difficulty or impediment a child bears, no matter how insurmountable, is renamed, “a challenge,” as if autism or spina bifida were little more problematic than an invitation to a tennis match.

When the number of assaults in a school district drops 10%, whatever the reason – usually unknown – somebody rushes to give the superintendent a raise, or at least a good newspaper headline touting his or her “Administrative Acumen.”

School bullies, if even recognized as such, are forced to sit still for a few hours while “experts” chatter at them about “conflict resolution.” The result is predictable: when their teachers complain that the bullying has not stopped, they are told that it has, but the kids have adapted it to their particularly – perhaps even “culturally distinctly” – assertive manner.

Eduspeak smokescreens do serve a useful purpose on many an occasion. For example, when a parent comes in to complain that his or her child’s grades are “unfairly” low, or that a disciplinary action imposed on poor “fruit-of-the-loins” is not "fair" (read, “fair” to mean, “to be imposed on other kids, not mine”).

To respond to such a complaint, teachers and administrators can invoke school “policies” which “the law” or “the school board” compels them to follow, despite the fact that they, the teachers and the administrators, too, recognize the sterling nature of the child victimized by such rules and regulations as an “inadvertent mishap.” “We understand that your son was just ‘playing around’ when he bumped his classmate down the stairs. But once the ambulance was called, our hands were tied.”

To examine these issues further, see COOPERATION AND COERCION


Cordially
--- EGR