How Much for an A+?
Should kids be rewarded for good grades? Get expert advice.
To motivate her middle school son to improve his grades, Lisa Dominici of Rye, New York, offered Christopher a video-game system if he earned high honor roll for two quarters in a row. It didn't work. Chris made "regular" honor roll, and Lisa decided she wouldn't dangle a carrot like that again.
"I want to instill in Christopher an inner desire to achieve and excel, and I don't think our showering him with gifts is the way to do that," she says a year later. "Ultimately, it's the sense of accomplishment and increased self-esteem he gets from achieving his goals that should drive his efforts."
Dominici's instincts on this are scientifically sound. "Research has repeatedly shown that the more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward," says Alfie Kohn, Ph.D., author of Punished by Rewards: The Trouble With Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes. "So these incentives aren't just ineffective — they're actually counterproductive."
A spate of new research on praise and rewards is turning previously accepted wisdom on its head. Take for example, a study of New York City schoolchildren by Stanford University professor Carol Dweck, Ph.D. She found that students who were told they were smart fared worse on tests than those who were praised for being hard workers.
"Kids who are repeatedly told they are smart don't want to take on a challenging task because they don't want to make mistakes and lose the intellectual label they have," says Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. "They think, ‘If I was smart when I succeeded, I must not be smart when I fail.' It doesn't breed lasting confidence, motivation, or resilience."
Mark Lepper, Ph.D., the Albert Ray Lang professor of psychology at Stanford University, says children can be conditioned to get rewards, and begin to use them against their parents. A mother he knows told him the following story: At a white-tablecloth restaurant, her 5-year-old son — whose behavior had improved dramatically after she initiated a series of rewards with stickers — picked up a crystal goblet and held it high. "How many stickers do I get if I don't drop this on the floor?" he asked his stunned mother.
Rewards work, Lepper continues, when they are offered in a sincere and meaningful way. When Dominici's son eventually did achieve a place on the high honor roll, his family's spontaneous dinner celebration was much more meaningful than the promise of an expensive toy. They called grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and Dominici watched Chris beam as each person learned of his accomplishment and offered congratulations. "The message is, ‘This is something we really value,'" Lepper says. "Being proud and feeling good is a huge reward."
But even grOwn-ups get rewards for well done work — employees receive year-end performance bonuses, raises, sometimes even vacations. Shouldn't kids benefit in the same way? They're not equivalent situations, most experts agree. School-aged children should get pleasure from just learning and discovering. They should learn to feel that academic success is the result of hard work, and that there's a reward in the work. But that doesn't mean you should never reward or praise them.
"It has a lot to do with how you phrase it," says Dweck. "The message should be, ‘Let's celebrate your effort, not your genius, and it really should be a celebration more than a reward." Here are some tips on how to recognize your child's efforts:
- Be spontaneous: Lepper compared the performance of kids who were promised a reward for schoolwork with those who were surprised with a reward after completing the task. He found that the kids aware of the incentive lost interest in the task twice as fast as those who didn't know a reward was coming. So have dinner out to celebrate a good report card or the completion of a tough project. But don't promise it in advance — and don't do it for every success.
- Praise effort, concentration, and hard work: "This is a much more sincere approach than praising a child's intelligence or grades," Dweck says. Make a point of emphasizing (and celebrating) progress over absolutes: The child who pulls up a C to a B probably worked as hard, or harder, than the one who coasts to an A every time.
- Teach your children that their brains will get stronger and work better the more they use and challenge them — just like their muscles: "If everyone can get smarter and grow their brain, learning becomes less of a competition," says Dweck. "It means that everyone can learn, and that changes the way we think about education." Dweck's studies have shown that children who understand this "unlock their motivation. Their grades rebound because they no longer worry about looking smart or dumb."
- De-emphasize grades: Kohn says students who focus on grades tend to lose interest in learning for education's sake. Instead, note your child's efficient use of her time, praise her careful preparation for a test, or commend her for putting all her work away when she finished it. Together these are all tasks that make her a better student. Help her see that while grades do still matter (for college admission, for example), it's education that will really fuel her long-term success.
