by Alfie Kohn
12. See Kohn 1992, chapter 4; Orlick; and games listed on websites such as cooperativegames.coms and familypastimes.com.
13. Goldstein.
14. Samuelson. In this column he equates the elimination of class rank with excessive praise and, of course, participation trophies.
15. See “Class Rank.” Says William Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s longtime dean of undergraduate admissions, “In recent years we have gotten away from [class rank]. . . . Oftentimes there are no meaningful differences whatsoever between someone who is number one and someone who is number 81” (quoted in Pappano).
16. “Class rank can also be manipulated. As early as ninth grade, top students figure out the selection procedures and find ways to improve their standing in comparison to classmates. They’ll take, for instance, an ‘easier’ Advanced Placement course—AP Biology instead of AP Chemistry. Others don’t take certain required classes—namely courses that don’t carry bonus points—until the latter half of their senior year, after class rankings are tabulated and sent out in college applications. More worrisome is the practice of teenagers who won’t pursue an interest in, say, photography for fear of lowering their average. Those classes normally do not carry bonus points. ‘A client of mine told me that taking music or journalism was out of the question because she couldn’t justify what it would do to her GPA,’ [education consultant David] Altshuler recalls. ‘I can tell you there was a lot less joy in her curriculum’” (Suarez).
17. Kohn 1999a, 1999b, 2011b.
18. George.
19. Fogarty, p. 27.
20. For evidence against these practices, see Kohn 2000 and 2011, respectively. For examples of BGUTI justifications for them, see Kohn 2005b.
21. See Kohn 2006.
22. Bauerlein.
23. Sengupta, p. B4.
24. For example, see Bensman; Gray and Chanoff; and Posner. Admittedly, such upbeat accounts are more suggestive than definitive—first, because the writers are obviously sympathetic to these alternative schools; and second, because of the possibility of a selection effect: The outcomes may be due to the kinds of children who attend such schools in the first place rather than to the effect of attending these schools. (It would be impractical and unethical to randomly assign a large group of children to different kinds of schools.) Still, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence pointing to the opposite conclusion.
25. Reynolds and Baird conducted the first study and cited the second (by Jeylan T. Mortimer and colleagues).
26. Gosman, p. 106.
27. Blog post: Lahey. Education columnist: Hoerr 2012. Tough interview: Wente. Like so many other commentators, Tough contrasts the practice of making sure kids fail so they will develop self-discipline (good) with praising them too much to raise their self-esteem (bad). I’ll have more to say later about self-discipline, praise, and self-esteem.
28. Also, we should be careful to define what we mean by successful. To be rich or famous is not necessarily to be an admirable or psychologically healthy human being. Plenty of corporate titans and politicians who point to their humble origins and repeated defeats on the way to victory have ended up “successful” only in a narrow and ultimately not very important sense of the word.
29. That a bad grade often leads to misbehavior—not just the other way around—was recently confirmed by researchers who followed students over several years: Zimmermann et al.
30. Combs, p. 123.
31. Too much emphasis on success or failure—that is, on results—can be a problem. This is a fascinating revelation in its own right, but one that would take us too far afield here. Suffice it to say that when we get kids thinking about their achievement or performance rather than focusing on the learning itself, the outcomes are often disappointing. The simple-minded emphasis on results and “rigor” that characterizes demands for accountability in education often creates an approach to teaching that interferes with intellectual discovery and exploration. The problem isn’t just that achievement is typically defined only as scores on standardized tests; it’s that most education reformers are unfamiliar with the distinction between performance and learning. For more on this, see the research cited in Kohn 1999b, Chapter 2.
32. For two examples, see Allen and Wuensch; and Boggiano et al. More generally, see the work of Andrew Elliot on performance-approach versus performance-avoidance orientations—for example, Elliot and Harackiewicz.
33. Stipek, pp. 130–31.
34. By contrast, kids who succeed are more likely to explain what happens by citing the effort they made, which creates an auspicious (rather than vicious) circle. See, for example, the results of a study with elementary school students of different ages by Wigfield. The work of Bernard Weiner and Carol Dweck is also relevant here.
35. Covington, p. 78.
36. For example, see Wigfield; and four studies cited in Deppe and Harackiewicz, p. 869.
37. Many psychologists have written about this phenomenon. One example: Deppe and Harackiewicz.
CHAPTER 5
1. Krugman.
2. Keilman.
3. Those outraged by participation trophies readily concede this point. “By age 4 or 5, children aren’t fooled by all the trophies,” one journalist says in an essay titled “Losing Is Good for You.” It seems reasonable to conclude that if they have no power to mislead, these trophies are unlikely to adversely affect kids’ thinking or motivation. Yet somehow the fact that no one is fooled just seems to compound the writer’s fury about the fact that kids “automatically get an award” (Merryman).
4. Baumrind 1972, p. 278.
5. Bean, p. 2.
6. I’ve explored the effects of punishment in some detail in Kohn 1996, 1999a, and 2005a.
7. Stepp.
8. See Kohn 1999a, chapter 6; and 2005a, pp. 34–42, 153–60.
9. That distinction, between effort (or process) and ability (or person) praise, which has attracted considerable attention over the last few years, is derived from the work of Carol Dweck. I have been greatly impressed and influenced by Dweck’s broader argument, which spells out the negative effects of leading people to attribute success (or failure) to their intelligence (or its absence). But the critical distinction between effort and ability doesn’t map neatly onto the question of praise. First of all, while it’s impossible to dispute Dweck’s well-substantiated contention that praising kids for being smart is counterproductive, praising them for the effort they’ve made can also backfire: It may communicate that they’re really not very capable and therefore unlikely to succeed at future tasks. (If you’re complimenting me just for trying hard, it must be because I’m a loser.) Some studies have supported exactly this concern (see Kohn 1999a, chapter 6).
Second, the more attention we give to the problems of ability-focused praise in particular, the more we’re creating the misleading impression that praise in general (or a version that’s done “correctly”) is harmless or even desirable. Of the various problems I describe here—its status as an extrinsic inducement and a mechanism of control, its message of conditional acceptance, its detrimental effects on intrinsic motivation and achievement—none is limited to the times when we praise someone’s ability. In fact, I’m not convinced that this type is any worse than other praise with respect to these deeper issues.
Finally, to the extent that we want to teach the importance of making an effort—the point being that people have some control over their future accomplishments—praise really isn’t required at all. Dweck readily conceded this in a conversation we had some years ago. Indeed, she didn’t seem particularly attached to praise as a strategy, and she willingly acknowledged its potential pitfalls.
10. Like other sorts of rewards, praise often diminishes the recipient’s interest in the task (or commitment to the action) that elicited the praise. It’s also likely to interfere with the quality of performance. The effect of a “Good job!” is to devalue the activity itself in the child’s mind—for example, reading, drawing, helping—which now
comes to be seen as just a means to an end, the end being to receive that expression of approval. If approval isn’t forthcoming next time, the desire to read, draw, or help is likely to evaporate.
11. Martin Seligman is quite explicit about this: “Praise your child contingent on a success, not just to make him feel better,” he counsels (Seligman, p. 288). Richard Weissbourd, too, decries “too much unconditional praise” (p. 52). Many conservative critics also express indignation that children are praised—and consequently come to expect praise—for what they ought to do just because they’ve been told. The ideal here is unquestioning obedience. From this perspective, the ultimate nightmare is praise that is “indiscriminate” or given “for nothing”—in other words, not at all conditional. My position is that we should offer unconditional love to children, not unconditional praise. While I’m troubled by the practice of saying “Good job!” to make kids do a better job, I think it’s silly to say “Good job!” when they’re not doing anything. To object to doling out approval as compensation for turning in an impressive performance at some task isn’t the same as arguing for more praise—even the noncontingent kind. (For more, see Kohn 2005a).
12. Johnson. The article lumps together grade inflation, T-ball games where no score is kept, and the decision to increase the number of Academy Award nominees for best picture.
13. Whether it makes sense to say that all children are “special” depends on whether that word is used to denote uniqueness (in which case the statement is true) or some attribute that by definition only a few possess (in which case it’s not).
14. This creates an interesting dilemma when those two features diverge. Who should get the prize—individuals who are gifted, or those who are successful?
15. Dries. For another refreshing response to the sport of ridiculing Millennials, see a cartoon by Matt Bors at http://goo.gl/4jHSJ. (“The only thing more lazy than a 20-something is the generational slander that takes place anew every two decades or so . . .”)
16. As I was writing this chapter, Time magazine published a cover story called “Millennials: The ME ME ME Generation,” which consisted of a series of outlandish generalizations, some complimentary but most disparaging, about 80 million young people (Stein). The writer began by claiming to have found “cold, hard data”—largely consisting of Jean Twenge’s claims—and announced at one point, “Millennials got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believe they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance.” Even if that statistic is accurate (which means that a majority of Millennials do not hold that belief), the attempt to link this point of view with participation trophies has absolutely no basis in fact. Assertions of this kind are quite common; evidence for them is not merely rare but nonexistent.
17. In his book The Competitive Ethos and Democratic Education, the late John Nicholls wrote incisively about this issue and how it exposes our core values. If our goal is to help children—all children—“develop or exercise their powers as fully as possible or accomplish as much as they can . . . [then] it would be irrational for us to promote competitive or publicly evaluative educational environments.” Even when it meets conventional criteria for being fair, Nicholls adds, competition tends to “increase our preoccupation with how our ability compares with that of our peers and thereby compound[s] inequality of motivation and diminishes the quality of learning and accomplishment” (Nicholls, pp. 117, 158). Ultimately we have to decide whether our priority is to sort children or to support them—to figure out who’s better than whom or to help as many kids as possible to succeed.
18. The answer depends on which time periods are being compared and which students we’re talking about: Those at a single university? All elite colleges? All colleges and universities? High schools? It also depends on how the data are gathered. Most statistics showing more A’s now than at some time in the past are based on student self-reports, which are notoriously unreliable. For a more accurate picture of whether average grades have changed over the years, we’d need to look at official student transcripts. Clifford Adelman, a senior research analyst with the US Department of Education, did just that, reviewing transcripts from more than three thousand institutions. His finding: “Contrary to the widespread lamentations, grades actually declined slightly in the last two decades.” A second analysis, which reviewed college transcripts from students who were graduated from high school in 1972, 1982, and 1992, confirmed that there was no significant or linear increase in average grades over that period. (The average GPA for those three cohorts was 2.70, 2.66, and 2.74, respectively.) Even when Adelman looked at “highly selective” institutions, he again found very little change in average GPA over the decades. And a review of other research suggests a comparable lack of support for claims of grade inflation at the high-school level. (For more about these findings, see Kohn 2002 and an annotated guide to the data at www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/gisources.htm.)
19. Maybe students are turning in better assignments. Maybe instructors used to be too stingy with their marks and have become more reasonable. Maybe the concept of assessment itself has evolved, so that today it’s more a means for allowing students to demonstrate what they know rather than for sorting them or “catching them out.” (The real question, then, is why we spent so many years trying to make good students look bad.) Maybe students aren’t forced to take as many courses outside their primary areas of interest in which they didn’t fare as well. Maybe struggling students are now able to withdraw from a course before a poor grade appears on their transcripts. (Say what you will about that practice, it challenges the hypothesis that the grades students receive in the courses they complete are inflated.)
20. The two Mansfield quotes are from Scocca and Steinberg, respectively. The Kamber quote is from Toth.
21. Milton et al., p. 225.
22. One odd argument for deprivation is based on a scarcity model. The reasoning is that there are only so many pleasant experiences one can have in one’s life, so they shouldn’t be used up too soon. If we provide our children with too many “wonderful experiences,” then they’ll “have nothing to look forward to once they’ve reached their majority,” warns the author of a book called Spoiled Rotten (Gosman, p. 49).
23. Holt 1982, p. 267.
24. “I don’t want to hear your complaints about anything you’re being made to do (or prevented from doing)” is not an unusual sentiment; in fact, it may be exactly what your boss would like to say to you. But that doesn’t mean it’s admirable to insist, perhaps with a bit of a smirk, that children should just do whatever they’re told, regardless of whether it’s reasonable or how it makes them feel. If we might respond with frustration or resentment to receiving such a message, why would we treat kids that way? “No whining” mostly underscores the fact that the person saying this has more power than the people to whom it’s said, and it also communicates that what matters most to this person is his or her convenience; it’s obviously easier for anyone in a position of authority if those being ordered to do something comply without objection.
25. Heubert, p. 27. Research on this topic has been conducted by Lorrie Shepard, Ernest House, Robert Hauser, Linda Darling-Hammond, and many others.
26. Natriello, p. 15.
27. Billotti et al.
28. See Lakoff, especially p. 12 and chapter 5.
29. A move in London to discourage the use of red ink for this purpose was predictably denounced as “political correctness” (Philipson). (On the political implications of the phrase “political correctness,” see Kohn 2011a.)
CHAPTER 6
1. Mecca.
2. For example: Christopher Lasch (“For Shame: Why Americans Should Be Wary of Self-Esteem”) in 1992, Joseph Adelson (“Down with Self-Esteem”) in 1996, Chester E. Finn, Jr. (“Narcissus Goes to School”) in 1990, Al Shanker (“All Smiles”) in 1994, and Charles Krauthammer (“Education: Doing Bad and Feeling Good”) in 1990.
3. Of course, some
people do compliment kids to help them feel better about themselves. But not all self-esteem boosting consists of praise, and, more important, not all praise is intended to raise self-esteem. As I argued earlier, much of it, like other rewards, is more about reinforcing certain behaviors in an effort to elicit compliance.
4. For example, Martin Seligman’s dismissive comments about self-esteem appear alongside his denunciation of “massive grade inflation . . . competition becoming a dirty word . . . the demise of rote memorization . . . less plain old hard work” (Seligman, p. 28). And Roy Baumeister, the most prominent academic critic of self-esteem, advises a sympathetic interviewer (in an article titled “When Bad Kids Think They’re Great”) to “set the rules, reward the child when the child does well, punish the child when he or she does badly” (Milstone).
5. “Poorer mental and physical health . . .”: Trzesniewski et al. 2006. Preadolescents more aggressive: Donnellan et al. Problem eating: McGee and Williams. Depression: Orth et al. 2012: “We replicated previous studies showing that low self-esteem prospectively predicts depression but that the effect of depression on low self-esteem is small or nonsignificant. . . . A similar pattern emerged for measures of dispositional positive and negative affect. . . . In addition, we found that self-esteem was prospectively related to higher levels of relationship satisfaction, job satisfaction, occupational status, salary, and physical health, controlling for prior levels of these variables, but none of these life outcomes had reciprocal effects on self-esteem (or, if significant, the coefficients were small). Moreover, all results held across generations” (p. 1283).
6. Baumeister et al. 2003, pp. 25, 28; Lyubomirsky et al.
7. Baumeister et al. 2003, p. 15; McFarlin and Blascovich.
8. Swann et al., p. 87.