I say the following with sincerity and without exaggeration. Reading this book has significantly affected me. My social philosophy has been altered and how I interact with people changed. Many of my long established teaching practices have been dramatically modified. I attempt to motivate my students much differently than I did in the past. I see its influence in virtually very class.

This book is a frontal attack on "Skinnarian Behaviorism" as a means of long-term influencing of people. Basically, "Behaviorism" is the use of rewards and punishments to change behavior. This operant conditioning is how we train animals. Rewards and punishments are also the most effective way to change human behavior in the short-term. Given the right rewards and punishments we can get people to do most anything. The author, Alfie Kohn, admits that a parent might get a child to straighten up her room by promising a trip to the zoo or threatening a loss of TV time; a teacher might get a student to run some laps by promising a "free activity Friday" or threatening a lower grade; and an administrator might get a worker to complete more assignments by promising more merit pay or threatening to monitor an earlier check-in time. What Kohn does not believe is that any such rewards and punishments will have a long-term benefit on behavior. On the contrary, he believes just the opposite and marshals a great deal of research data showing that both extrinsic rewards and punishments tend to undermine intrinsic motivation. Such reinforcers are generally perceived to be controlling and hence lead to a reduced desire to do these things in the future.

At 284 pictureless/chartless pages, I think this book was a little longer than necessary. Also, like me, you will probably be disturbed by many of the views put forth. He is uncompromisingly against such practices as testing, grades, competition, merit pay, and even praising of students. And, he certainly does not provide many specific alternate solutions for dealing with immediate misbehaviors and motivation problems. Nevertheless, I believe his basic philosophy is worth our study and consideration. He has convinced me that our over reliance on rewards and punishments to control short-term behavior is likely playing a role in our not being able to create long-term intrinsically motivated learners. Furthermore, he has raised doubts in my mind that these kinds of reinforcers are helping us developing self-reliant, responsible, and socially caring individuals. I now question the wisdom of grading everything. Maybe what we need is more discussing and modeling of actions and deeds being done for their own sake. Maybe we should be offering more unconditional love rather the conditional praise and rewards. If you read this book I would enjoy hearing what you think.

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