Punished by Rewards

This week we had a moment in class that applied the theories of a book I have been reading in an unexpected manner. The central tenet of Punished by Rewards is that extrinsic motivation no matter how potent will never cause the same levels of productive output as intrinsic motivation. Even though people may not be inherently interested in the task at hand providing an environment that encourages new ideas, allows for personal choice, and offers challenging assignments can intrinsically motivate them. I have been trying to convey to my students that we have a thirst for learning that can only be satiated by our hard work. Of course explaining this to nine year olds can be challenging, so I broke down and implemented systems of group and class points to encourage good behavior and a positive work ethic. The authors of this book would spit on these systems as diluting the potential of my students’ capacity for success.

In any case, our class requires that group members ask each other group member their question before they ask the teacher. This in turn frees me from the responsibility of repetitive questioning and grants me freedom to work with specific students more closely. Students must also be willing to answer anybody else’s question. When all group members have the same question they may then ask the teacher to help alleviate their confusion.

The other day a very stubborn student, J…, refused to help his group-mates because he was working on a different problem then everybody else. The rest of the group had their hands up so I went to check out what was happening with group five. The commentary was that J… was refusing to raise his hand to get this question answered. J…, said, “I don’t have the same question so I am not raising my hand.” He also contributed that he knew the answer to the group’s question but refused to answer because he was on a different problem. OH! Well Sir J… king of group five let us all bow to you almighty authority and be subservient to your will. No, this is unacceptable. “Group 5, you lose two points.” This was probably not the best way to handle the situation. J… went up and erased his group’s points and I went back to work. The classroom was operating at an appropriate noise level and things sounded like they were going fine until I heard a desk violently crash to the floor and saw D… and J… tumbling on the ground with fists and feet flailing desperately trying to beat each other to a pulp. WHOA! What happened here? A cool calm classroom instantaneously erupted into slugfest central.

D… who has a nasty temper apparently lost it when his group sacrificed their points because J… decided that being helpful was unnecessary. D…’s eyes began to swell, his fists clenched and I can picture him turning over to J… and just popping him in the face. This is not the intended result of a point system. Ooops.

I went over, pried the children apart put them both in a headlock, told the rest of the kids to get back to work, and dragged them down to the office. I was mildly heated because these children had totally destroyed the classroom chi and I had to write them up for fighting, an automatic 3 day suspension. Before I headed back to class we sat down and had a conversation about the problems with fighting and the resultant consequences. Without my prodding both of the students expressed that missing school is problematic because they are losing an opportunity to learn and that disrupting class causes others to suffer by interrupting the limited time we have to strengthen our brains.

While fighting is completely unacceptable I cannot help but find some comedy in this whole situation. I obviously need to rethink the role of points and extrinsic motivators to make sure they are more carefully framed to avoid this type of backlash. However, the responses from D… and J… about the detrimental effects of fighting were proof that classroom messages are taking hold. Punished by Rewards has taken on a new meaning in the context of my classroom. It had not occurred to me that the punishment delivered by a reward system was going to be the impact of a fist upon another student’s face.