Rating: 
Summary: How effective is the reward system?
Review: The author introduces a view of extrinsic rewards that is totally different from what most people have known. Kohn suggest that competition and reward are unhealthy and will deter motivation. He contends that rewards are bribes and used as a method to control people. To substantiate his stand against pop-behaviorism, Kohn examines the reward systems in the classroom. He offers many references and support in his aim to prove that the use of rewards is counterproductive in the classroom, workplace and at home. Kohn's ideas differ greatly from "mainstream" thinking about education. Devoting chapter 6 to the praise problem, Kohn suggests that praise benefits the giver rather the recipent, causing an imbalance in power. Most classroom teachers have been taught to be in control of their students. This chapter goes against the praise-and-ignore approach that Brophy views as helpful in classroom management. Also, inclusive classrooms are a fast-growing concept in education. Many approaches that Kohn suggest in this book may not apply to the children with behavior problems that are in our classrooms now. These students need praise and some form of a reward system. Futhermore, I strongly disagree with Kohn's attitude on the Book-It program. The most important journey that my first graders embark upon is "learning to read". During their journey, they participate in the Book-It program. Kohn is opposed to this literacy awareness program that offers a pizza slip to each child that reaches his/her goal each month. Contrary to Kohn's belief that the child will stop reading once the pizza slips stop, this program actually intensifies their desire to become readers. Another dominate practice in schools that Kohn opposes is the grading system. He indicates that report cards and grades alter a students' performance, citing that when you grade students, their interest in what they are doing declines. Ask a teacher how beneficial a grading system is in keeping track of a childs' performance. As a college student returning to school for licensure, grades are an important motivating factor for me. Although I do oppose most of Kohn's beliefs, I recommend this book to all people that work with children. Kohn provides an alternative approach that we may not have ever considered. The reader is given a controversial look at the system of rewards that is so familiar to us. His references of interesting experiments analyze how we should approach and react to different situations, such as competition. While we consider some competition to be healthy for a child, Kohn discourages competing due to the consequences of losing. But in the real world, sometimes losing is inevitable. However, we should all agree with Kohn's stance on collaborative learning. He emphasizes the success of cooperative grouping in the classroom, which is a fairly new concept. American education is flowing with diverse prospectives that reflect a growing, changing world. The more open-minded an educator is to new ideas, the more valuable that person will be to our society. One should never be so comfortable with his/her own view to the point that creativity is threatened. Beverly E. Smith, 10/23/99
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting conception of reward systems......
Review: Khon, Alfie (1993). Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's as Praise, and Other Bribes. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company.Punished by Rewards, by Alfie Kohn, is a book that explains the negative aspects of receiving rewards. The author describes in great detail the effects that rewards have on people of all ages. The book is concerned with operant conditional learning. The basis of the book reflects the favoring of behaviorism. This is because behaviorists believe that everything we do can be explained by the principle of reinforcement and the learning of how rewards work. The book is mainly about the reasons why rewards are not effective and proving that rewarding a person can be negative. The author's purpose in writing this book was to open a new perspective to people's minds. He wanted to show that rewards are not the only way to help a person succeed. A good amount of people feel that rewards are beneficial and can be a positive way to influence a person. Kohn wanted to show proof that rewards could be almost classified as a punishment by making a person lazy or less motivated. He gave many examples, experimental statistics, and facts to back up his theory. One consisted on a series of ten studies that found with preschoolers working for toys, older children for grades, and adults for money, that they all try to avoid challenges (65). Another example found that kids are constantly fearful of getting things wrong, which is why they do as little as they can get away with (159). At first, I could not decide if I supported the author or not. I am in favor of the reward system just because I think that a person should be rewarded. On the other hand, the author gave many examples to support his theory of no rewards. One idea that I did agree with was at the beginning of the book. "The more rewards are used, the more they seem to be needed" (17). I do agree that if you constantly give a person rewards, they will always want something in order to complete a task. But on the other hand, I disagree with idea that all rewards are negative or bad. I feel that some rewards can either motivate students to excel or help promote employees to increase in power at a workplace. The author has a list of seven suggestions to minimize the salience of grades: 1. limit the number of assignments of which you give a letter or number grade, or better yet, stop the practice altogether 2. limit the number of gradations 3. reduce the number possible grades to two, A and Incomplete 4. never grade students while they are still learning something 5. never grade for effort 6. never grade on a curve 7. bring students in on evaluation processes I would recommend this book to some people, but mainly teachers. This could possibly be beneficial in that, it could bring about new ideas to motivate a classroom. The teacher can decide on a new learning technique, if the present routine is not suitable or helpful for the children. It can help teachers by giving them opinions and criticisms from different areas of learning. An example would be "not to praise people, only what people do" (109). Saying something about what the person has done makes more sense than just saying "good job" to a person; being more specific is beneficial.
Rating: 
Summary: Did he write the book for free? Think about it...
Review: Other reviewers have already made note of this but it is worth repeating: Kohn is seriously misinformed about the empirical studies that have been conducted within education and psychology to address the motivation issues he writes about. While it is true that under particularly contrived and artificial conditions there may be a detrimental effect on a person's motivation to engage in an activity if some form of "reward" is dangled, there is a wealth of peer-reviewed studies that show the beneficial effects of rewards when positive consequences are properly arranged following specific behavior. What Kohn primarily writes about as support for the detrimental effects of rewards comes from mis-applications of sophisticated learning principles that have been extensively investigated by behavior analysts. As an analogy, can you imagine someone like Kohn writing about denouncing the practice of medicine as being universally bad when unskilled surgeons perform poorly? Of course not, he would simply point out that the technology needs to be used properly. Lastly, I would also like to point out that Kohn selectively discusses, at great length, the small minority of studies that imply any support for his theories. While less exciting a read than Kohn's book, a much more even-handed and scholarly work on the intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation controversy can be found in the book "Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation: Resolving the Controversy" by Cameron and Pierce. For an easier and more popular book on this controversy (but no less well written), pick up "Other People's Habits" by Daniels.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting conception of reward systems......
Review: Khon, Alfie (1993). Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's as Praise, and Other Bribes. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company. Punished by Rewards, by Alfie Kohn, is a book that explains the negative aspects of receiving rewards. The author describes in great detail the effects that rewards have on people of all ages. The book is concerned with operant conditional learning. The basis of the book reflects the favoring of behaviorism. This is because behaviorists believe that everything we do can be explained by the principle of reinforcement and the learning of how rewards work. The book is mainly about the reasons why rewards are not effective and proving that rewarding a person can be negative. The author's purpose in writing this book was to open a new perspective to people's minds. He wanted to show that rewards are not the only way to help a person succeed. A good amount of people feel that rewards are beneficial and can be a positive way to influence a person. Kohn wanted to show proof that rewards could be almost classified as a punishment by making a person lazy or less motivated. He gave many examples, experimental statistics, and facts to back up his theory. One consisted on a series of ten studies that found with preschoolers working for toys, older children for grades, and adults for money, that they all try to avoid challenges (65). Another example found that kids are constantly fearful of getting things wrong, which is why they do as little as they can get away with (159). At first, I could not decide if I supported the author or not. I am in favor of the reward system just because I think that a person should be rewarded. On the other hand, the author gave many examples to support his theory of no rewards. One idea that I did agree with was at the beginning of the book. "The more rewards are used, the more they seem to be needed" (17). I do agree that if you constantly give a person rewards, they will always want something in order to complete a task. But on the other hand, I disagree with idea that all rewards are negative or bad. I feel that some rewards can either motivate students to excel or help promote employees to increase in power at a workplace. The author has a list of seven suggestions to minimize the salience of grades: 1. limit the number of assignments of which you give a letter or number grade, or better yet, stop the practice altogether 2. limit the number of gradations 3. reduce the number possible grades to two, A and Incomplete 4. never grade students while they are still learning something 5. never grade for effort 6. never grade on a curve 7. bring students in on evaluation processes I would recommend this book to some people, but mainly teachers. This could possibly be beneficial in that, it could bring about new ideas to motivate a classroom. The teacher can decide on a new learning technique, if the present routine is not suitable or helpful for the children. It can help teachers by giving them opinions and criticisms from different areas of learning. An example would be "not to praise people, only what people do" (109). Saying something about what the person has done makes more sense than just saying "good job" to a person; being more specific is beneficial.
Rating:
Summary: Uninformed about behaviorism, but some useful points
Review: I'm not sure how many times I've had to deal with this sort of confused analysis. Mr. Kohn is on track on many points, but is about as uninformed of modern behaviorism as he could be. I'm sorry to have to say this but in no way does providing reinforcement eliminate 'intrisic motivation'. That is just silly. Also, 'reward' is not the same as 'reinforcement', though it serves his goal to hint at this. Anybody who knows enough about operant behaviorism already knows this. Read it if you want and use it if you must. But, I issue a challenge to everybody on planet earth. Try to live a life without utilizing reinforcement. It's not possible. I'm not saying it is difficult, but rather that you can't avoid it. If you believe so, you must be blissfully ignorant of the things happening around you. If you are a teacher and want to become more effective, contact a good behaviorist, not the local clown who calls himself a psychologist. You may think Alfie is helping you, but most of the things he suggests are already part of the behavioral perspective (minus the extremism of some of his points). We just use more exact terminology. The difference is that relying on Mr. Kohn to solve your problems will leave your toolbox half-full. Be a behaviorist, but not a bad (i.e., pop) behaviorist. On this, I guess we agree.
Rating: 
Summary: The Emperor Has No Clothes!
Review: Not only does the emperor have no clothes; Kohn has the courage to say as much. He has certainly pointed out some widely held false beliefs. His examples of the damage caused by actions based on these false beliefs can only resonate with any caring, observant person who has worked in the posioned enviroments pop behaviorism can create. Kohn and the researchers he cites may have it wrong, too. That is a matter for for further study. Yet, Kohn-unlike the pop behaviorists-resonates with established management gurus like Deming, Drucker, and Goldratt. Throwing in concurrances with Gallup's massive study documented by Buckingham, et al and with Schumacher's economic conclusions yields diverse support for Kohn's unorthodox (for a psychologist) views. Thinking back to the last time I took a psychology class, my money's on Kohn over the psychological conventional wisdom.
Rating:
Summary: Life Changing
Review: Alfie Kohn's views on punishment and reward have changed the way I teach and will change the way I parent. This book is an incredible insight to the damaging effects of rewards. Kohn opens eyes to a more effective way to parent, teach and manage behaviors.
Rating:
Summary: It's not easy to accept the truth
Review: This book was a watershed for me as a professional manager of people. As most of America, I too was convinced that rewards such as monetary bonuses and the like were the only way to achieve performance. As Alfie points out, these methods do indeed produce results, but only in the short term. How else to explain the turnover rate for sales people in most companies? Funny but it is the company which creates its own turnover issue, increase in new-hire training costs, false reporting of numbers, and artificial barriers to even greater success in sales numbers. It's even more bizarre to see companies offer similar (although drastically less) rewards to "service" personnel and then wonder why customers aren't loyal. How many of you actually arrive at a retail destination and want a salesperson? We are all not motivated by the same things, nor do we all share the same goals either professionally or personally so why would we put in place a system that assumes such a declaration? Learn about the bell shaped performance curve to understand that the group of people who produce the largest output are often the most unrecognized and angry. Companies that emphasize reward and recognition to their best performers will overlook the hardest and most loyal employees and then want to punish people for cheating on numbers simply to keep their jobs. Is it any surprise that these same companies end up fighting off lawsuits and labor unions? For instance, how does any company know how many phone calls or sales referrals per day it takes to keep a customer loyal? Of course the point is that the workers of today were the children of yesterday; pinholed into limited performance expectations by parents, teachers, and academic systems. If you had limited artistic skills, how did it feel to be told you were an "D" student? Is it any different for the child whose brain doesn't do well at math? Each child deserves to be acknowledged for who they are and what they can accomplish as individuals and that takes more effort than what we see in today's public schools. Now we have the most outrageous example of rewards run amok-schools and teachers being rewarded for increased grades and test scores. Only a few years later we find out that the grades were falsely reported and teachers complain that they spend all their class time preparing students for tests. Go figure or just read Alfie.
Rating: 
Summary: Missed the "gravy" train
Review: Alfie Kohn missed the train on this one. As others have pointed out on this website, he confused reinforcers with rewards. What's surprising is that he did this even after (apparently) reading through Skinner's books and even interviewing him. Nevertheless, nobody will accuse Mr. (Dr.?) Kohn of being hard-hearted: He, at least, finds reinforcement in sticking up for the other viewpoint, making us humans feel important again. Skinner probably knew in his heart and head that comparing humans to radishes (we are only here to carry and pass on genes) would not appeal to most people (punishing). Yet, this is what biology has given us: this is our main purpose, the sound and fury notwithstanding. Alfie (What's it all about?) at least tries to prop up our little egos again, and some of us need that. I found Skinner's viewpoint (in his interview with Alfie) to be close to the Buddhist viewpoint (no egos, no fear of death, et cetera). It also reflects such viewpoints as expressed by biologists in their analyses of human moral systems. Anyway, this book is still worth reading, if only for Skinner's interview in the appendix. Diximus.
Rating:
Summary: Parents, teachers and managers must understand Kohn's book
Review: Kohn offers research instead of folk wisdom to conclude something seemingly counterintuitive to most folks: rewards actually undermine performance. Why? Basically because the ownership for the activity is shifted from the person expected to do it to the person armed with the ability to reward. Deci's _Why we do what we do_ offers another key perspective on this important point.
|
