I always felt reluctant to come up with brilliant ideas, as this could perhaps be punished by having to accept a financial (NOT very substantial) reward in front of the whole company in a so called ‘canteen meeting’.
Strolling the net I came across this interview with Alfie Kohn, regarding his book ‘punished by rewards’. I like it especially as he also describes what would be nessecary to inspire learning; the ‘three C’s’. (Bit of a turn off there, seven S’s, five A’s, six sigma, seven habits,… – all those numbers make me lose my concentration. My mind always wants to escape as soon as numbers show face) But… these three C’s are not that bad: content, community, choice.
From the article:
Content: Has the child been given something to do worth learning? If you ask me what to do about a kid being “off task”—one of our favorite buzzwords—my first response is going to be, “What’s the task?” If you’re giving them garbage to do, yes, you may have to bribe them to do it. If the kids have to endlessly fill in the blanks on dittos, you’re not going to get rid of rewards or threats anytime soon.
The second C is community: not only cooperative learning but helping kids feel part of a safe environment in which they feel free to ask for help, in which they come to care about one another as opposed to having to be manipulated to share or not be mean. Some of the outstanding work on creating caring communities is being done by the Developmental Studies Center in Oakland, California.
The third C is choice: making sure that kids are asked to think about what they’re doing and how and with whom and why. You know, kids learn to make good choices not by following directions but by making choices.
Parents who have read the book ‘Punished by rewards’ tend to go overboard with not punishing their kids by rewarding them. Scott Noelle wrote an entry in his blog on not throwing away the baby with the bathwater. I like this entry as it is about the undercurrent in communicating. It speaks about what will come across whether it is verbalized or not.
I think this applies to rewards too. A reward is a punishment if the undercurrent of what is communicated is ‘your worth does not equal mine’.
