Punished by Rewards - (Book) - Alfie Kohn

Punished by Rewards - (Book) - Alfie Kohn

Punished by Rewards

The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes

Our basic strategy 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 that we train the family pet.

In this groundbreaking book, Alfie Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm.  Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals.

Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives. Programs that use rewards to change people’s behavior are similarly ineffective over the long run. Promising goodies to children for good behavior can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. In fact, the more we use artificial inducements to motivate people, the more they lose interest in what we’re bribing them to do. Rewards turn play into work, and work into drudgery.

Step by step, Kohn marshals research and logic to prove that  pay-for-performance plans cannot work; the more an organization relies on incentives, the worse things get. Parents and teachers who care about helping students to learn, meanwhile, should be doing everything possible to help them forget that grades exist. Even praise can become a verbal bribe that gets kids hooked on our approval.

Rewards and punishments are just two sides of the same coin — and the coin doesn’t buy very much. What is needed, Kohn explains, is an alternative to both ways of controlling people. The final chapters offer a practical set of strategies for parents, teachers,  and managers that move beyond the use of carrots or sticks.

Seasoned with humor and familiar examples, Punished by Rewards presents an argument that is unsettling to hear but impossible to dismiss.

Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes: Kohn, Alfie: 9780618001811: AmazonSmile: Books - https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0618001816?tag=amz-mkt-chr-us-20&ascsubtag=1ba00-01000-s1100-win10-other-smile-us000-pcomp-feature-scomp&ref=aa_scomp

Punished by Rewards - (Book) - Alfie Kohn

Table of Contents

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Preface
PART ONE – The Case Against Rewards
1	Skinner-Boxed:  The Legacy of Behaviorism
2	Is It Right to Reward?
3	Is It Effective to Reward?
4	The Trouble with Carrots:  Four Reasons Rewards Fail
5	Cutting the Interest Rate:  The Fifth Reason Rewards Fail
6	The Praise Problem
PART TWO – Rewards in Practice
7	Pay for Performance: Why Behaviorism Doesn’t Work in the Workplace
8	Lures for Learning: Why Behaviorism Doesn’t Work in the Classroom
9	Bribes for Behaving:  Why Behaviorism Doesn’t Help Children Become Good People
PART THREE – Beyond Rewards
10	Thank God It’s Monday: The Roots of Motivation in the Workplace
11	Hooked on Learning:  The Roots of Motivation in the Classroom
12	Good Kids Without Goodies
	Afterword 1999
	Afterword 2018
Appendix A:  A Conversation with B.F. Skinner
Appendix B:  What Is Intrinsic Motivation?
Appendix C:  The Behaviorists Talk Back

Punished by Rewards - (Book) - Alfie Kohn

My Next Book | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

My Next Book | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

My Next Book

I will have a new book published by the end of this year called Confessions of a School Reformer. How an idea becomes a book even after all I have written, remains mysterious to me. In reconstructing the process which often means demystifying what occurs and making it appear linear and logical, I remain uncertain of exactly how I got the idea and how that idea morphed into a book proposal and then a contract with a publisher and voila!, the book appearing on my doorstep.

Here is what I believe occurred.

I had finished Chasing Success and Confronting Failure in American Schools (2020) and was thinking of my next project (yes, I need to have projects to look forward to). The theme of Chasing Success was how ideas of success and failure in public schools have a long history in American life and showed up repeatedly during three major reform movements that blanketed the 20th and 21st centuries. I wrote the book but I could not get these surges of reform that roiled the nation and schools, and to my surprise, my entire life, out of my head.

A century ago, the Progressive movement swept across the nation’s schools and faded away by the 1950s only to be followed by the widespread quest for equality central to the civil rights movement that then gave way in the late-1970s to business-inspired reforms tying school improvement to the nation’s changing CONTINUE READING: My Next Book | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

#BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Online Book Forum: BLM co-founder Opal Tometi will join Brian Jones, Denisha Jones, Jesse Hagopian and Marshé Doss in conversation about making Black Lives Matter–from the streets to the classroom. – I AM AN EDUCATOR

#BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Online Book Forum: BLM co-founder Opal Tometi will join Brian Jones, Denisha Jones, Jesse Hagopian and Marshé Doss in conversation about making Black Lives Matter–from the streets to the classroom. – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Online Book Forum: BLM co-founder Opal Tometi will join Brian Jones, Denisha Jones, Jesse Hagopian and Marshé Doss in conversation about making Black Lives Matter–from the streets to the classroom.

Register for this forum today at Register through Eventbrite 

Black Lives Matter co-founder Opal Tometi wrote the foreword for the new book, Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice, and she will be joining the book’s co-editors, Denisha Jones, Jesse Hagopian, along with contributing authors, Marshé Doss and Brian Jones. Join us for this conversation about making Black lives matter in our schools and beyond as part of this year’s Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.

In her foreword to Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice Opal Tometi writes: “Both within classrooms and outside the school grounds, Black lives are under threat. The events that led to the creation of Black Lives Matter—the murder in 2012 of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer—weren’t isolated events. The culture of endangering Black lives is something students know well from inside their very own classrooms. . . Young people deserve safe, affirming environments where they know without a shadow of a doubt that their lives matter. The work that supporters of Black Lives Matter at School are doing is making this happen.”

Join us for conversation about making Black lives matter in our school and beyond.

***Register through Eventbrite to receive a link to the video conference on the day of the event. This event will also be recorded and have live captioning.***

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Speakers:

Opal Tometi is an award-winning human rights defender and one of three women co-founders of #BlackLivesMatter. Born to Nigerian Immigrant parents in the USA, her human rights activism crosses borders and extends almost 20 years. Tometi recently graced the #TIME100 Most Influential people of the year 2020 and March 2020 cover for #TIMES100 Most Influential Women of The Last Century. She is the founder of the new media and advocacy hub, Diaspora Rising and is a trusted advisor to various transnational organizations.

Denisha Jones is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and Director of the Art of Teaching, graduate teacher education program, at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School.

Jesse Hagopian is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and teaches Ethnic Studies at Seattle’s Garfield High School. He is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School, an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine and is a co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives.

Marshé Doss was born and raised in South Los Angeles.She is a recent graduate from Dorsey High School in South Los Angeles. Marshé is an organizer and leader in the student-led movement Students Deserve. She leads the Making Black Lives Matter in Schools effort in LA, which tackles the school-to-prison pipeline and over-policing of schools in Black communities. She is a nationally recognized speaker, organizer, and activist, known for direct actions and addressing crowds of over fifty thousand people. She can be reached on Instagram at @its.marshe.

Brian Jones (moderator) is the Associate Director of Education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He writes about Black education history and politics.

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This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programing work.

#BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Online Book Forum: BLM co-founder Opal Tometi will join Brian Jones, Denisha Jones, Jesse Hagopian and Marshé Doss in conversation about making Black Lives Matter–from the streets to the classroom. – I AM AN EDUCATOR

“Teacher Unions and Social Justice”–A New Book To Spur Rebellion From Rethinking Schools, With an Online Book Launch and Discussion January 21 at 6:00 pm – 7:15 pm CST – I AM AN EDUCATOR

“Teacher Unions and Social Justice”–A New Book To Spur Rebellion From Rethinking Schools, With an Online Book Launch and Discussion January 21 at 6:00 pm – 7:15 pm CST – I AM AN EDUCATOR

“Teacher Unions and Social Justice”–A New Book To Spur Rebellion From Rethinking Schools, With an Online Book Launch and Discussion January 21 at 6:00 pm – 7:15 pm CST

Register here today for the book launch event. You can order the book here.

Lovers of social justice and education,

Iam excited to announce that I have a new book coming out from Rethinking Schools that I co-edited with Michael Charney and Bob Peterson: Teacher Unions and Social Justice: Organizing for the Schools and Communities Our Students Deserve.

When the epic story is told about how we finally built a society on true democracy and uprooted the last vestiges of systemic exploitation and oppression, there will undoubtedly be an important chapter about how organized workers in unions used their power to shut down segments of the economy and joined together with mass social movements in the streets to demand a better world. This is the power of social justice unionism and we desperately need to revive this tradition of struggle if we are going to achieve victories against white supremacy, undo record levels of wealth inequity, and challenge every other form of oppression in our society.

This beautiful new book includes lessons on reorganizing the labor movement and fusing it with social movements from many of the leading practitioners around the country. With historical lessons and first hand accounts from some of the most powerful educator strikes in the country, this book a contribution to arming educators with the understanding of their own power to change the world.

Included in the volume are the stories of how educator union organizers joined with parents and students around the country to build the movement to refuse to take or give high-stakes standardized tests; how union educators took up the struggle for Black lives by founding the Black Lives Matter at School movement; how they launched a strike in Los Angeles that included demands for immigrant rights and an end to the practice of police searching the belongings of mostly Black, Indigenous, and students of color in school; how educators in Chicago joined with parents and community organizers to win an anti racist reparations curriculum that would teach students the history of police torture in the city; how educators in Republican controlled states launched a wave of strikes that brought millions of more dollars to the school system; how educators have fought for and won community schools that provide wrap around services to students; how rank-and-file educators have built union caucuses that have helped to transform their local unions from a business model of unionism into a social justice union; and so much more.

On Thursday, January 21, the book’s editors will be joined by leading social justice union organizers Arlene Inouye and Michelle Gunderson to launch the book–and hopefully a new era of union power in the struggle for schools and society our children deserve (details about the book launch are below).

In solidarity,

Jesse Hagopian

Join Teacher Unions and Social Justice co-editors Jesse Hagopian, Michael Charney, and Bob Peterson along with contributors Michelle Gunderson and Arlene Inouye for the launch of a new Rethinking Schools book on the promise of social justice teacher unionism.

>> CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Editors and contributors will participate in a 75-minute conversation about building alliances with the community, the role of bargaining for the common good, the important roles of rank-and-file union caucuses, and how teachers can organize for racial and economic justice in our schools.

Jesse Hagopian teaches Ethnic Studies and is the co-adviser to the Black Student Union at Garfield High School in Seattle. He is a Rethinking Schools editor, co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives,  co-editor of, Black Lives Matter at School, and editor of More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing.

Arlene Inouye is UTLA secretary and co-chair of its bargaining team. She has been a speech and language specialist for 18 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Michelle Gunderson is an educator and union activist from Chicago. She serves as a trustee for the Chicago Teachers Union and is the former co-chair of the Caucus of Rank and File Educators.

Bob Peterson is a founding editor of Rethinking Schools, a former president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, and currently serves on the Milwaukee Board of School Directors. He is co-editor of several books, including The New Teacher Book, Rethinking Elementary Education, and Rethinking Columbus.

Michael Charney taught social studies in the Cleveland Public Schools for more than 30 years. He served as vice president of the Cleveland Teachers Union, where he led efforts to motivate teachers and paraprofessionals to change their schools.

The event is hosted by Rethinking Schools.

Participants will need access to Zoom. Register for the Zoom link, a free copy of the book’s introduction, and a 20% Rethinking Schools book/magazine discount code. The book is now available for pre-order. The estimated ship date is Feb 1, 2021.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER+ Google Calendar+ iCal Export

Details

Date: January 21 Time: 6:00 pm – 7:15 pm CST Website: https://secure.givelively.org/event/rethinking-schools-limited/teacher-unions-and-social-justice-online-book-launch-and-discussion