Punished By Rewards

Margaret Heffernan once said, “For good ideas and true innovation, you need a mix of human interaction, conflict, argument, and debate.” In the article it is debated if there is any benefit in monetary rewards for students. Teachers, and parents alike are always trying to find the best way to reward and inspire there students to do well in school. Matthew G Springer is a professor of Public Policy and Education at Vanderbilt University. He is also the director of the National Center on Performance Incentives. He wrote this article to display his research and studies.

Education today is too Type X- meaning the emphasis on greater rewards for doing what you should do anyways is based on extrinsic rewards. The education system seems to be heavily based on carrots and sticks. The biggest way to motivate someone seems to be by dangling something, such as a carrot, in front of someone 's face or poking them with a stick. If you want a student to do something, why are they motivated with some type of compensation such as an A in the class? In his book, Drive, Daniel H. Pink divides motivation into three categories that evolved over time- Motivation 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. using these theories to challenge this motivation of carrot and sticks.

Schools and college professors, who give you a good grade for excellent productivity on assignments, allow students to perform poorly, but still benefit relative to a person with an A. Two articles that observe grade inflation, find the rising problems of grade inflation, and finding solutions for grade inflation. Stuart Rojstaczer, an author from Grade Inflation Gone Wild, is a professor of geophysics at Duke university, and created gradeinflation.com in regards for his concern about grade inflation. On the other hand, Phil Primack is a journalist and teacher at Tufts University, and published in the “Boston Globe” Doesn’t Anybody Get a C Anymore? While college students, who work with little effort and still attain easy A’s by working poorly on assignments and exams, Primack and Rojstaczer, develop a firm connection towards grade inflation and the solution that can regain control over real education.

Alfie Kohn, author of “From Degrading to De-grading”, discussed the negative psychological effects that grades have on students. School should be used to educate people and strengthen their mind so that they can more easily learn to deal with specific challenges they will face throughout their life. There are two articles that agree with the views of Mr. Kohn, “Higher Education” by Howard R. Pollio and “Do Grades Do Any Good?” by Jessica Ellis. The articles that were chosen describe the importance of removing or replacing the grading system.

Another key reason that “there actions were foolish and immature so they should of been punished

Stickers, candy, raises, bonuses-a short list of the multitude of rewards that people are given over a lifetime. From the beginning of a human’s life, people have sweets and trinkets thrown in their faces as children. As a person ages, these rewards turn into money, grades, and larger items like cars. In the workplace, workers are given incentive plans to motivate and reward them with more pay and vacation sweepstakes. However, author Alfie Kohn of the nonfiction work Punished by Rewards believes that following these learned concepts of the good that rewards do is important. Kohn defines a reward as “a desired object or event made conditional on having filled some criterion: only if you do this will you get that” (pg. 53). He evaluates the three largest influences in a person’s life: home, school, and work; here, he reveals the issues with each type of reward system and ways to fix them. Kohn believes that behaviorism, that training a person to behave a certain way, is controlling and compels the reader to help make it stop.

Students, being stressed the majority of the school year, have the biggest issue with finding some determination to achieve strong grades. Whitley, also illustrates the accurate representation of being a student, “Grades are supposed to motivate students, but I would say more than half of people aren't motivated by grades”(1).Whitley speaks the truth about students not caring as much as they should,but if they know that they might be getting something in return then things might change. Some students need that extra push because they don't have much to look forward to, to keep them going,“ Because low income students often feel neglected by the public education system, education researchers such as Tom Brock say that they sometimes can distinguish between the value of the reward and the value of its symbolisms as a good faith gesture.“It was a very good positive signal coming from the outside that someone believes in them and trusts them¨(Whitley 2). Since students who are struggling financially, don't tend to have positive thoughts about a bright future, providing them with a little push of encouragement goes a long way. Even though to some, paying students sounds foolish because in society it's usually the other way around, but the impact it can have on the student's inner ambition and grades is very

Schools have students working every part of their brain throughout the whole day. Doing this most students work as hard or harder as the rest of the working class. If students work hard with all the other stress that is going around them while keeping up an eighty percent or higher in all classes, students deserve a reward for trying as hard as they do. As a student your brain has to change between different parts all most every hour, while most working class jobs have you using the same part of your

Learning is said to be a factor that is improved if young individuals will experience being paid when they do a task. This kind of action is only giving these immature members of the society the careless notion that life is all about being paid once a service is rendered, which is not an ideal start for their young minds. On the other hand children must be rewarded by simple appreciation primarily at school.

Sandel next adresses the concept of incentives and the way in which humans respond to them. Individuals act in order to maximize their own welfare and therefore respond things that allow them to do so; these things are known as incentives. Sandel provides us with the example of students who where offered financial incentive to do better in school. However the reaction to the incentives differed from the standard economic model. While paying students who passed AP exams did increase over all success, the results indicated that the amount of money payed made no difference in the amount of achievement. While the did serve its purpose as an incentive, the money did not act as a bribe but rather as an agent that changed the stigma associated with AP testing making it “cool” for students to do.

Students live in an instant gratification world where points are earned, rewards are given, checkmarks are made and stickers are received. These extrinsic motivational strategies may initially increase student performance, but over time research shows it may diminish students’ intrinsic motivation. Educators must be cautious of the rewards given to students. When rewards are over used students tend to want more rewards which decreases intrinsic motivation. In addition, overly rewarding students with positive praise and recognition can cause harm to motiving students to become genuinely motivated. Research states, “Supporting student autonomy in the classroom, by giving them meaningful choices regarding their own educations, and by setting up

The author assesses that “the more rewards are used the more they are needed”. People get unsatisfied with what they are getting eventually and the stakes rise. People only perform if there is an incentive for a reward, else they will not try hard at all. Sometimes rewards can be given for wrong reasons, make the judgements of individuals altruistic and even detrimental. If it pays must be good, the better the pay the better the reward, the greater the incentive. The value and purpose of rewards have become destructive for the convenience of the people who want to control behavior.

Deterrence are one of the punishments that is justified for modern society. Deterrence is a punishment that prevent other from doing the same similar crime. This also, helps the public from entering into and criminal activities. Deterrence is one of the major punishments that intimidates the public people by sending a out a message to the public people if you commit no crime you will not suffer as a criminal will suffer. The purpose of general deterrence is to discourage those from committing a crime or any wrongdoing this is taught by setting an example on how the person will suffer the consequences if the crime is committed this is another general way on how to intimidate the public people on how to obey the laws by setting unease example

Imagine this scenario: a lecture hall is filled to the brim with college students, more than half of the students are either daydreaming about the upcoming weekend or texting on their phones. Their professor stands in the front of the hall trying to give his prepared lecture, but the majority of his students are not paying attention. What shall the professor do to motivate his students to pay attention in class? He announces to them that if they can fully engage themselves in his lecture for the rest of the class time, he will give them each five dollars. The students are suddenly all ears, pens ready to take notes, eyes glued to the front of the room, in hopes of receiving the professor’s incentive. Does this seem like a harmless scenario for a desperate professor to motivate his students? While there are possibly individuals who would agree that the scenario is not invoking any harm on the students, there are others who would argue that paying students to try in school takes away their motivation to actually learn. Among the latter stands Alfie Kohn, author or Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes, who would be appalled by the professor’s actions. Kohn’s book challenges the common phenomenon of using rewards in everyday life in dealing with others. With examples pulled from schools, the workplace, and even households, he demonstrates to his audience that rewards have become means of controlling one another than as

One of the primary reasons both Locke and Hobbes form commonwealths is to punish violations of rights. Yet, each has different visions of what the ideal government looks like. These differences arise from their different views of punishment and the government’s authority. For Hobbes’ punishment “is an evil inflicted by public authority on him that hath done or omitted that which is judged by the same authority to be a transgression of the law, to the end that the will of men may thereby the better be disposed to obedience” (XXVIII.1),while for Locke politics is “a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in