Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (96 page)

In
“The Impact of Extrinsic Motivation,” Downing cites two studies related to
motivation and their correlation to success:

1)
Psychologists M.R. Lepper, D. Green and R.E. Nisbett studied children who spent
a high percentage of time drawing during free play. They took children
individually and asked them to draw. Expected-award children were shown a
good-player certificate and told they could win one by drawing. After they
drew, they were told they had done well and were given the certificate.
Unexpected-award subjects were not informed about the certificate, but after
they drew, they were given the same feedback and certificate. This condition
controlled for any effect due to receiving a reward. No-reward children drew
with no mention of a certificate and were not given one at the end, which
controlled for any effect due to drawing. Two weeks later, children again were
observed during free play to determine the percentage of time spent drawing.
Expected-award children spent less time drawing during the post-experimental
phase compared with the pretest baseline phase; pretest-to-posttest changes of
the other groups were nonsignificant. Compared with the other conditions,
expected-award subjects spent less time drawing during the post-experimental
phase. Similar results have been obtained in several studies using different
subject populations (children, adolescents, adults), types of rewards
(monetary, social) and target activities. The original study is titled
“Undermining Children’s Intrinsic Interest with Extrinsic Reward” and was
published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

2)
Psychologist Edward Deci did research with two groups to see the effect of
extrinsic rewards on learning. Group one received an extrinsic reward (money)
for solving a puzzle called SOMA; the second group received no rewards.
Afterwards, both groups were left alone and secretly watched. The group that
was paid stopped playing; the group not paid kept playing. Deci summarized his
findings thusly: “Stop the pay, stop the play.” He concludes, “Monetary rewards
undermined people's intrinsic motivation. . . . Rewards seemed
to turn the act of playing into something that was controlled from the outside:
It turned play into work, and the player into a
pawn. . . . Rewards and recognition are important, but as
the research has so clearly shown and I have reiterated many times, when
rewards or awards are used as a means of motivating people, they are likely to
backfire.”—Edward Deci, Why We Do What We Do

What becomes
immediately clear, even to those of us not in educational psychology, is that
the results of this research are repeated in study after study. There is
virtually nothing that supports rewards or awards as a way to motivate over the
long term.

However, one
could argue that rewards and awards are running rampant through our culture.
The idea manifests itself in different ways. Whether it’s the idea that every
child gets a ribbon for just participating or the use of food awards for
mundane tasks, the practice is everywhere.

In many schools,
you would be hard pressed to find an activity or cause that is in some way
not
related to food, more specifically, junk food or candy. Unfortunately, the
carrot at the end of the stick is not the satisfaction of helping others or the
accomplishment of working together for a higher cause. The ultimate goal is
self-serving. The “winner” of such charity gets a pizza lunch, or a doughnut
breakfast, or candy. Even in the regular routine of the classroom, junk food and
sweets play a pivotal role in the classroom-management techniques of certain
teachers.

I
am most perplexed by hardcore veterans of the chalkboard who subscribe to this
practice. Younger teachers and inexperienced administrators see the sugary
handouts as a means to bond with kids they do not see on a daily basis. It
makes them feel connected when in fact the kids come running like rats in a lab
for the treat, not for the sage advice. However, veteran teachers should know
better. They began teaching at a time when handing out candy to students would
have been unthinkable. They learned to manage the classroom with poise,
positioning, questioning techniques, and the ability to read body language.
They received degrees and licenses that studied the ways to foster intrinsic
motivation in students. And yet these same vets take the low road and attempt
to buy attention with Jolly Ranchers and Starbursts.

In addition,
schools lack a respect for parenting styles when sugary treats are made readily
available. Kids cannot delay gratification because they are, well, kids. They
cannot learn how to do this if candy is made available whenever they want it.
It is unfair and unrealistic to expect kids to turn down a treat when it’s
handed out by the authority figures in their lives. The very notion condones
the action. I have seen children eat ice cream for lunch on consecutive days.
That is what they do. If you are trying to raise a healthy child in your house
and do so by not making the unhealthy stuff available, good luck. Needy
teachers trying to be popular are undermining your best efforts.

The same
educators who use extrinsic rewards like candy will be the first to deemphasize
the importance of grades to students. A child has to be nothing but utterly
confused by these mixed messages. Teachers say things like, “You should learn
for learning’s sake and not worry about grades,” or, “Grades don’t matter.” And
at the same time they place a heaping bowl of candy in clear view as a reward
for the end of a successful class.

Some might call
my stance on sweets in schools draconian. I would agree that it is. Cupcakes,
candy, and soda have as much place in our schools as weed, cocaine, and crank.
Kids cannot regulate their intake or delay their gratification, and the
teachers, the ones in control, are pushing this shit. It’s no surprise we are
cranking out fat kids at an all-time high. The health concern is frightening
but secondary in the greater scheme of turning children into successful adults.
Happy people don’t chase the golden ring.

***

“To
me, it’s Super Bowl or bust. . . . If we play the way we’re
capable of, I think we have a legitimate shot.”

It’s
tough to find meaningful, eloquent quotes from a guy who made a career out of
throwing a football. However, the quote about the Super Bowl says a lot about
Brett Favre. He comes back year after year for the chance to be the best.
Brett’s motivation is another world title and a shot at football immortality. I
am sure it’s nice to have the houses and the cars and the lifestyle, all of
which would have been guaranteed ten years ago.

Mario
Lemieux, the legendary center for the Pittsburgh Penguins, came out of
retirement in 2000. Michael Jordan, arguably the most influential basketball
player of all time, came out of retirement in 1995. These athletes did this
because they are intrinsically motivated to achieve. Success is addictive, and
they were hooked. While there were lucrative sponsorship deals floating under
the surface (Lemieux was reportedly offered $500,000 per year to use Nike gear
for as long as he continued to be on the ice), neither man needed any more
money when he came out of retirement.

Every
year, the incredibly boring Pro Bowl follows the same pattern. The guys show
up, do an interview or two, beat up some hookers, and then go out to play for
$40,000 each. If you are in the Pro Bowl, chances are you have a multi-million
dollar contract, and the prize money for this game is a stack of chips you plan
to lose at a table in Vegas. But halfway through the second quarter, the tone
of the contest changes. Players get serious as the competitive juices begin to
flow. By the fourth quarter, guys are hitting each other like they did the
hookers. The best athletes in the world are not motivated by anything but a
desire to be the best, to enjoy success at the highest levels.

***

An
essay written by Richard Strong, Harvey
F. Silver, and Amy Robinson, in 1995, details what it takes to motivate
students. Silver Strong & Associates have been running programs in
differentiated learning for a long time and have spent time transforming many
schools.

Extrinsic
motivation—a motivator that is external to the student or the task at hand—has
long been perceived as the bad boy of motivational theory. In Punished by
Rewards, Alfie Kohn (1995) lays out the prevailing arguments against extrinsic
rewards, such as grades and gold stars. He maintains that reliance on factors
external to the task and to the individual consistently fails to produce any
deep and long-lasting commitment to learning.

You
would be surprised how much information you can get from a book flap. Usually
enough to fool people into thinking you have read it.

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.

***

My parents have lost their fucking mind. When they visit they
bring an avalanche of cupcakes, snacks, and candy for my two kids. My mom will
say things like, “Now, honey, if you eat all of your breakfast, you get to have
dessert.”

When you are between the ages of three and eight it makes perfect
sense to have dessert after every meal. In the 1970s, my parents chained me and
my brother to the dining room table and forced us to eat runny, cold sweet
potatoes. If the CIA would ditch waterboarding and send the 1977 version of my
dad to Afghanistan to “clean their plates,” terrorism would be a thing of the
past. And yet these are the same people who now make my children think that
icing is on the food pyramid.

Well-meaning teachers act like sweetly vindictive grandparents
bent on buying love by spoiling children with things they know they should not
have. Every time I hear a remark about how candy is synonymous with childhood,
I want to ask if diabetes is as well. The statistics and the line of fat kids
at the mall food court do not lie.

The research provides nothing conclusive except divergent
theories. Grades and extrinsic rewards might motivate certain learners, and
that is the best-case outcome. For the majority of us, success comes from
achievement and not from grades, endorsement contracts, cupcakes, hot tubs full
of supermodels, gold stars, or candy.

Not that I would turn down a hot tub full of supermodels.

One Nation

Which of the following is
bullshit?

A. One Nation Under God

B. In God We Trust

C. God Bless America

D. God and Country

E. All of the above

***

The notion of
America as a Christian nation is one that rears its ugly head periodically.
Using the study of history as a means to acquiring truth, it becomes easy to
dismiss such nonsense.

In
every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is
always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for
protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this
combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the
purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to
all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes. . . .

Do you recognize
the writer of that quote? No? How about this one?

And
the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being
as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the
generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. . . .

Try one more on
for size.

There
is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made
one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. . . .