Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes [Paperback]

Alfie Kohn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1999

The basic strategy we use for raising children, teaching students, and managing workers can be summarized in six words: Do this and you'll get that. We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in much the same way we train the family pet. Drawing on a wealth of psychological research, Alfie Kohn points the way to a more successful strategy based on working with people instead of doing things to them. "Do rewards motivate people?" asks Kohn. "Yes. They motivate people to get rewards." Seasoned with humor and familiar examples, Punished By Rewards presents an argument unsettling to hear but impossible to dismiss.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"a clear, convincing demonstration of the shortcomings of pop-behaviorism, written with style, humor, and authority," Kirkus Reviews

"Every parent, teacher, and manager should read this book -- and hurry." -- Thomas Gordon, founder of Parent Effectiveness Training

About the Author

Alfie Kohn's six previous books include Punished by Rewards and No Contest: The Case Against Competition, as well as Beyond Displine and What to Look for in a Classroom. Descrilbed by Time magazine last year as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of educational fixation on grades and test scores," he is a popular lecturer, speaker to teachers, parents, and reasearchers accross the country. The author currently resides in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 2 edition (September 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618001816
• ISBN-13: 978-0618001811
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 1.1 x 9.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #13 in Books > Medical Books > Psychology > Education & Training

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

196 of 206 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Caused me to question rewards; still yearn for solutions January 24, 2005

By souldrummer VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I come at this book as an educator and as someone who has spent a lot of time grading students and helping them navigate the treacherous waters of the standardized testing game. This was on the bookshelf of the tutoring center where I work and I thought I'd see what this man's case was.

For the most part, I found this to be an intentional counterbalance to business as usual. It appears that there are a great many reviewers with the psychology background to assess how he may set up BF Skinner as a straw man to strike down. I'm not sure it's necessary to set up Skinner as a man to strike down. I do agree with Kohn, however, that "pop behaviorism" and incentive driven behaviors are pervasive in our culture. Incentive plans in business, grades at school, and rewards at home are commonly thought of strategies for management. Kohn consistently attacks the abuses and excesses of incentives and gives a coherent framework for what makes rewards wrong, focusing on how relationships are fragmented and creativity and attention are undermined. As a teacher who has seen grade obsessed students in tutoring and classroom situations, any book that provides philosophical and psychological research to advocate for intrinsic learning is welcomed.

Readers should be aware that this is a *very* radical book. Like other radicals, Kohn is probably better at ripping down the capitalist, or in this case incentive-based, order than in building something up to replace it with. Kohn wants us to reason with people and clearly communicate agreed upon objectives. Has Kohn ever tried to implement these strategies in a classroom of 35-40 urban students? I believe that he would argue we should have smaller class sizes that we could value intrinsic motivation, but I question whether he would be living in the real world at that point. There are some valuable bullet points in the final 80-100 pages of the book where he advocates for strategies. Maybe his other works go at that side. Fundamentally, though he asks us to get away from our American focus on ends such as profits, grades, and behavioral complicity from our children. That makes this book truly radical and I am still weighing in my own mind how convinced I am about the pragmatic value of this book.

I think this book is valuable reading about the dangers of using rewards without thought for the long-term consequences of those rewards. I caution readers from joining Kohn wholeheartedly for in many ways, he seems to me to be a counterconsultant rather than an established educator with unassailable results or a business leader who has built a business implementing his principles. Now that I think of it, I yearned for the long term narratives of success stories where I could interpret details. He does cite a lot of research studies in support of his views, but I am not enough of a psychologist to ascertain whether I am fully convinced of the value in embracing the risks inherent with embracing his views full force.

Stay tuned. I might edit this one and say this has been a paradigm altering book that leads me away from keeping test prep as part of my personal mission. As it stands, I consider this a book that has helped me by raising some unresolved questions in my mind.

4 stars.

--SD

159 of 167 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Real life experience with Kohn's ideas March 22, 2005

By Robert M. Madden

Format:Paperback

So I wanted my students to learn how to read notes on the staff. I had a fun idea to use "notes" to spell words and then the students would decipher the notes to figure out what the words are. I was concerned about them being motivated to do the assignment, so I turned it into a game and use jolly ranchers to reward the team that comes up with the words the fastest. Guess what? As soon as the jolly ranchers were rewarded, the students lost interest. Also, the kids were more concerned about fairness and cheating then the actual activity. More over, certain students took over the competition and other students relied on their already exisiting expertise to win them the jolly rancher.

I tried a different tactic the next period. I decided to promise them the jolly rancher regardless of the outcome, but I still wanted to play the game. I still got much of the same.

That night I picked up this book and read a good deal of it. I decided to put Kohn's ideas to the test. The next day, I pointed the kids to the materials, showed them basically how to do it and set them on their way. No games. No Jolly Ranchers. Nothing. Guess what? All students were learning and involved, students who finished came up to me and asked what to do. They were more than happy to either help other students or figure out more words, or create their own. A complere 180. True, there were plenty who asked, "Do we have to do this?" or "What do we get when we finished?" Which just reinforced for me Kohn's notion that kids have become addicted to rewards.

Does this book show you how? No. Thus the 4 stars and not 5. But it does point you in the right direction.

As for other's assertion that Kohn has oversimplified behaviorism and used research to his own ends: The point isn't whether Kohn has oversimplified it, and Kohn says as much. The point is that the people who are PRACTICING IT AS GOSPEL have oversimplified it. I believe Kohn realizes rewards are necessary, just not the rewards/reinforcement that have been in use. Learning is its own reward. If this wasn't true, why would these people who reviewed the book have read it? Were they paid to read it? Were they promised a pat on the head if they read it? Love is its own reward. Meaningful debate/discussion is its own reward. Generosity is its own reward. Using these as your reinforcers will bring results.

Hope this helped...

84 of 89 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Rewards Backfire October 25, 2001

By Yolanda Preysner

Format:Paperback

Punished by Rewards is a thought provoking book written for a general audience that argues that use of rewards undermines efforts to teach students, manage workers, or raise children. About one third of the book is devoted to educational issues, one third to parenting concerns, and one third to business concerns. This review is from an educator's perspective.

In this well-researched book, Alfie Kohn takes on the educational establishment dominated by experts who advise behavioristic classroom management plans. He challenges many current classroom management practices such as the contingent use of stickers, prizes, parties, gold stars, grades, honor rolls, awards assemblies, and praise. Any teacher working on improving classroom management and motivating students will benefit from reading this refreshingly original and persuasive book and will have a new perspective on some entrenched educational practices that often go unquestioned. As the author says, you don't have to accept everything he says to see the value in making some changes.

Kohn's central thesis is that it is misguided for teachers (and parents and bosses also) to rely on extrinsic motivators and reinforcers to assure quiet, orderly classrooms and manipulate students to behave in ways that are for the teacher's convenience. It is well acepted that punishment is not a way to motivate students. He contends that punishment and rewards are merely two sides of the same coin--and the coin doesn't buy much. Both approaches are applied and popularized behaviorism, a theory attributed to B. F. Skinner and his followers. Citing current research, he backs up his idea that rewards only succeed in the short term. Changes usually do not persist when there are no more "goodies" to be won. Many studies he cites show that performance is not improved and may actually be impaired by use of reward strategies.

Rewards fail for five reasons. First, rewards punish and control by seduction. The failure to win a reward or the threat to remove a reward is functionally identical to the threat to employ a punishment. Second, rewards rupture relationships both vertically (student/teacher) and horizontally (student/student). Both rewards and punishment are really about someone maintaining power and control over another and they induce a behavior pattern whereby the subordinate tries to curry favor and impress the rewarder rather than encourage a relationship of trust and openness. Also, rewards lead to destructive competition. Third, employing rewards can change superficial behavior effectively, but it ignores the underlying reasons for the problem behavior and so does not effect long-term change. Rewards are not solutions, they are gimmicks, shortcuts, quick fixes that mask problems. Fourth, rewards discourage risk taking, creativity, and taking on challenges because the task is now just something that stands in the way of gaining the prize. Finally, and most tragically, rewards change the way people approach the task. To reward someone for something that many find intrinsically interesting and enjoy doing is to destroy motivation. For example, the Pizza Hut "Book It" reading incentive and summer library reading incentive programs are, according to Kohn, very destructive. Reading is presented not as a pleasurable experience, but as something one has to be bribed to do with a food reward or other token.

Kohn devotes an entire chapter to the proposition that praise itself can have toxic effects upon the recipient. Praise is often given for the convenience of the praiser and to manipulate the recipient. It can impede performance by signaling low ability, making people feel pressured, inviting a low-risk strategy to avoid failure, and reducing interest in the task itself. Children can be hooked on praise and become too extrinsically motivated, too dependent upon approval from others. Kohn offers five or six solid and practical strategies for employing encouraging words and providing feedback without praising. This chapter of the book is eye opening, especially for parents.

So what is the alternative to manipulation by praise and tangible rewards? That depends upon the goals one wishes to achieve and the problem to be solved. Unlike the behaviorist method, the Kohn method offers no quick, easy solution to classroom management and student motivation problems. To his credit, Kohn devotes the last third of his book to addressing how to get beyond rewards. He fits himself into the constructivist philosophy with his emphasis on learning as discovery, enhancing student control and choice through class meetings, encouraging collaboration and revising content to follow students' natural interests. He points out that young children learn naturally because they are curious about how the world works. They are always seeking to solve their own questions to make sense of their world. Schools need to rethink curriculum and content. Teachers need to rethink whether they really need the control they seek with behavior management plans.

Teachers will find this book very useful. After explaining the theoretical underpinnings of his position, Kohn has many useful examples of the negative results from using reward strategies. Yet Kohn is realistic and recognizes that even if one agrees with him, change will take a long time. He presents many interim strategies teachers can use to reduce the negative impacts of entrenched practices and recognizes that teachers cannot single-handedly effect change if their entire school system depends upon manipulation through rewards. He recognizes that teachers are often judged by their superiors in ways that encourage them to go with the cheap behaviorist tricks that offer temporary solutions. He offers many specific ways teachers can slowly reduce their own dependence on such tactics.

In conclusion, this book offers a useful guide for action for any teacher who recognizes the limitations of the behaviorist methods in place in almost every classroom in America. For those who are unconvinced, Kohn says he'll be satisfied if they are at least questioning their teaching, parenting, or supervising after they close the book. In a sincere yet lighthearted way he invites the reader to "Ride my train as far as you can and get off when you have to. Maybe later you'll hop aboard again, a little closer to'working with' than 'doing to' and we can continue the journey." Interested readers will find it easy to continue journeying with Kohn as he is a prolific author of both books and articles and maintains a website.