Why are you writing about this Mr. B instead of what your favorite type of dragonfly is??

Well, I don’t really know that much about dragonfly’s so you’re going to have to listen to my thoughts on why this should be important to everyone.

Our entire society is built on extrinsic rewards, it is a key aspect of capitalism. You complete something, you get something in return: money, points, tokens, tickets or my personal favorite, candy.

The problem is we confuse these with intrinsic rewards. Intrinsic rewards are things we get some sort of internal reward for: a sense of accomplishment, a positive relationship, or positive self-esteem. These tend to be more sustainable over the long term because they are not subject to moods and conditions.

They also offer no clear starting or finish line for whatever the behavior is. This reduces stress and anxiety leading to greater endurance for completing challenging tasks.

When it comes to education, we have a heavy reliance on extrinsic rewards, namely grades. Grades encourage students to engage in challenging activities out of fear of punishment, or not getting the reward. What happens when the reward is removed?

For many, this is where the learning will end because they are, “done with that class.” They “got the grade…” they wanted. Is this the best way to look at learning when you are teaching people with an average of fifty years left to learn about any given subject?

I don’t think so. Teaching students in a way that increases intrinsic motivation is however, much more difficult to measure. How can we measure the endurance gained by learners over a lifetime and what the positive externalities could be of such learning? The short answer, very hard to do.

So we end up with a system that focuses on a very transactional form of learning that actually promotes limits on what is learned because of what I call “destination points” to get to the next level of learning or accomplish some learning goal. How could anyone build a bridge if they never learned requisite math for the project? Why though would we stop at “this is enough” to build this and not focus on let’s see if we can build it better? Every end of learning should simply be correction to lead to a higher level of learning.

To be continued…

• (no title)
• Courage Under Fire
• Exploring the Nostalgia of Time Capsules
• Relationships That Matter
• My Modern Sports Team Would Be the Knights of Ni