This was originally posted on May 2, 2005 in my blog entitled Schooling ≠ Education.
If I’m responsible for my own learning then I am intrinsically motivated. If we look at the structure of public education and of most of western society – our businesses, our religious institutions, and our governments – we can see that intrinsic motivation is something that we say we value while at the same time we ‘motivate’ it right out of people.
One of the best works I know of that articulates this is Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes.
Education does nothing (or very little) to develop a human beings natural inclinations to learn, to grow, and to improve. And, at the same time, consciously or unconsciously; purposefully or ‘by accident’ – we are doing a lot to repress or stamp out these natural tendencies and replace them with external motivations and rewards (grades, points, gold stars, bonuses, prizes, and host of additional more subtle and devious devices).
These devices influence our behaviour and impact our productivity as individuals and as a nation.
Back in 1996 we were working with what was then the Ernst & Young Management Consulting group. We were helping them develop a unique collaborative environment and practice for helping their corporate clients. As young consultants would come into this environment to see if they wanted to work there I would ask them, “what do you want to do?” and they would answer, “just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
Now these were the brightest of the brightest – MBA’s fresh out of college as well as seasoned consultants. Their intrinsic motivation had been ‘educated’ right out of them. It took weeks and months for the ones that were able to work in this environment to unlearn what they had learned and to get back in touch with the parts of themselves they had lost or denied in order to survive their education and get into the positions they were in.
David Langford – an educator and consultant – does a fabulous experiential activity in his seminars to get people to feel the insanity of this practice. Because, if you think about it, where does this kind of thinking lead us? Where will it end?
We haven’t seen anything like the ending yet but you can get a sense of where it might go when you see where some schools are finding themselves – paying students to come to school.
And the flip side of this thinking takes us to an extreme that is so unthinkable but metaphorically already happening – we will kill young people if they don’t pass the test, achieve the grade, or make the team.
So what would it take for us to transform education so that every single person involved was intrinsically motivated? Was in touch with their natural tendencies and desires to learn, to grow and improve? What would a school look like if everyone that attended was there because they wanted to be there?