book review, part 1

So I’m back to blogging, but this time, I’m kicking it up a couple notches as far as the depth of my content goes.  I will be reviewing a book that I am reading for my summer graduate course called Punished by Rewards: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, A’s, praise and other bribes, by Alfie Kohn, first published in 1993. 

My class doesn’t start for another week and a half, but I’ll have to present on this book as part of a team project that makes up a huge chunk of my grade.  And once the class starts, I’ll have a ton of other reading to do each week, so I thought I’d get a head start on this book.  I decided that I should take notes on the book as I go along, to help me remember the content.  I’ve read the first 2 chapters, and I’m finding it interesting, so I thought I’d type up my thoughts and post them on my blog, maybe others will find it interesting.  If it’s not interesting to you -  no big deal – I’m practicing my writing skills and will most likely have a much better understanding of the book!

In this book, Kohn challenges the very foundation of almost everything in our current society – application of Skinner’s behaviorism to so much of what we do in parenthood, education and work.  The first chapter, “Skinner-boxed: the legacy of Behaviorism” provides an overview of behaviorism (along with some excerpts from Skinner’s writings and interviews that led me to believe that Skinner had some issues with personal relationships, maybe he had Asperger’s?), and connects it to how we use the principles of behaviorism in society, which he refers to as “pop behaviorism.”  Pop behaviorism can be summed up as “Do this and you’ll get that” and has been generally accepted as the best way to teach children and manage employees.  Kohn challenges this assumption and sets out in this book to show how this rewards system is not only ineffective, but harmful.

“If we constantly see people being manipulated with rewards, we may come not only to accept this as natural but also to assume the tactic can be generalized: if we pay adults for working, why not children for reading? And we reward children, they may absorb the message that the way to get other people to do what they want is to bribe them.” (p. 15)

Why is pop behaviorism so pervasive?  It takes “courage and thought” to teach children self-control and problem solving, to examine the appropriateness of our expectations, to manage a workplace environment and inspire workers to do their best work.  But giving out stickers or offering bonuses to get the results you want? That “is seductively simple to apply” (p. 17).   Kohn recognizes that in the short-term, the method seems effective, but he questions the long-term effects:  “The negative effects appear over a longer period of time…the more rewards are used, the more they seem to be needed…the other, more substantive reasons for you to do your best tend to evaporate, leaving you with no reason to try except for obtaining a goody.” (p.17).  He says that he’ll go into more depth on this in a later chapter.

In chapter two, “Is it right to reward,” Kohn questions the use of rewards as a moral consideration, apart from its effectiveness.  There are 2 opposing viewpoints that he considers: 1) that people ought to be rewarded for their work and 2) that there is something inherently objectionable about giving rewards in the first place.

The first viewpoint is supported by the equity principle: “that people should get what they deserve.”  This based on the idea that if you work hard, you will succeed.  Seems logical, until one examines it more closely.  “What if the result of hard work is failure?” or who gets to define success? Or if it’s a team effort, who is responsible for the success?  (This section made me think of all the top business/financial executives who took huge bonuses, despite having run their companies, and our economy, into the ground.)

Kohn also notes that there are examples when the equity principle shouldn’t apply anyway – does a parent give out dinner to his kids based on how much they can contribute to the household? No, that’s silly.  In this analogy, he also says that policymakers struggling over health care resources don’t “automatically assume that the most productive contributors to society (whatever that means) should get the most care.” (p. 22) As this point, I questioned Kohn’s credentials as an American, but as this book was written a while ago and before the recent health care debate, I’ll give him some grace for this analogy.  Maybe Americans were philosophically more compassionate towards the uninsured 20 years ago??

Ultimately, I think that Kohn’s critique of this approach is that situations are often too nuanced, or life is sometimes simply unfair, for an across-the-board method of  “you get what you deserve.”

Kohn turns his attention to the 2^nd perspective, which he supports - that there is something objectionable about using rewards in the first place.  Skinner is famous for his experiments in getting hungry lab rats to push buttons or something like that, then extrapolating that data to inform ideas of human behavior.   Kohn states though, that “even to suggest that we learn or work only in order to obtain rewards…is not only inaccurate but demeaning as well” (p. 25).   Later on, he describes how researchers are recognizing that humans are curious, strive to overcome challenges, seek to master skills, etc. intrinsically, so we don’t need rewards to motivate us.  But, “when we repeatedly promise rewards to children for acting responsibly, or to students for making an effort to learn something new, or to employees for doing quality work, we are assuming that they could not or would not chose to act this way on their own.  If the capacity for responsible action, the natural love of learning, and the desire to do good work are already part of who we are, they the tacit assumption to the contrary can fairly be described as dehumanizing.” (p. 26)

Even worse than the dehumanizing offer of rewards is the underlying purpose – we offer rewards and incentives in order to control another person’s actions or behavior.  “Anyone who is troubled by a model of human relationship founded principally on the idea of one person controlling another must ponder whether rewards are as innocuous as they are sometimes made out to be.” (P. 26). 

Kohn goes on to describe the use of “token economies” that used to be popular in mental hospitals and schools.  He spoke of the “height of their popularity” as past tense, but I’m pretty sure it is still very popular in schools because both of the elementary schools we have attended, and my friends’ schools, have used a similar system, often referred to as positive behavior support. Basically it’s a reward system where students receive some sort of tokens when they are caught showing good behavior, then they can trade those tokens in for rewards, prizes, privileges, etc.  This system is appalling to Kohn: “it is difficult to imagine a more flagrant example of control than one person’s giving another a token redemeeable for candy or privileges to reward him for being ‘cooperative’” (p.27).  I think this critique is a little extreme – yes, I can imagine more flagrant examples of “control,” examples that are much worse.  I would say this is a subtle example of manipulation, not blatant control.  (Maybe I’m biased, because the token economies at my kids’ schools have been positive experiences.  And the system is designed as an alternative to punishing bad behavior, it’s used to promote good behavior, help define that behavior for kids, etc., not controlling kids.) 

This chapter gets into some interesting territory here, because his definition of “rewards” is very broad and targets several strategies that I have used in my own parenting and programs in my boys’ schools.  I like a lot of the things that he says, but I’ll have to wait until he explains his ideas in more depth “later in the book,” before I can really decide if his ideas have merit and value.  Basically, now I’m left wondering how to get my sons to help around the house – if I can’t use punishment or reward, he’s not internally motivated and doesn’t care about my logical arguments for why it’s necessary, or how it will make him a better person.  Or how schools are supposed to teach good character and appropriate behavior to classrooms full of kids.  So these later chapters need to have some good info, and I’m looking forward to reading them!