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My son struggled to read when he was young. Over the summer we set a goal and attached a payout to it. Yes, I bribed my son to read. The problem is now I can't

My son struggled to read when he was young. Over the summer we set a goal and attached a payout to it. Yes, I bribed my son to read. The problem is now I can't get him to stop. Money talks.

hguant 3y ago
My math teacher in 6th grade had a conversation with my parents that essentially went "he's not going to learn algebra from the Hobbit, but I feel bad telling him not to read" There are worse problems to have!
stevekemp 3y ago
We've got a six year old, just about to start school in a few months, and we've done the same thing. We started giving him a quarter of a lego minecraft set every time he read two pages of text - either in English or Finnish - then we had to move to a bunch of bricks every time he read a full chapter. The surge in his effort, and abilities, was almost frighteningly quick. (Here in Finland kids can go to daycare from 1 year old, and start in pre-school when they're six. School-proper starts at seven.)
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  I don't think you can parent without some level of bribing but note that research has been done suggesting that extrinsic motivation can negatively impact intrinsic motivation. One personal anecdote of mine is a school friend who announced that he was never going to read a book again after finishing school (with good grades). For him, reading books was not a thing he loved, just a means to an end. https://www.weareteachers.com/understanding-intrinsic-vs-extrinsic-motivation-in-the-classroom/ https://www.weareteachers.com/understanding-intrinsic-vs-ext...
  - light_hue_1 3y ago
    Sadly, the link you provided shows how much nonsense there is in this space. They provide two sources of "evidence". Both of them are total junk. For example, they say: As educators, we have heard a lot about the downside of extrinsic motivation. Studies have shown that extrinsic motivation produces only short-term effects, at best. One study out of Princeton University goes so far as to say, “External incentives are weak reinforcers in the short run, and negative reinforcers in the long run.” That study? https://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/RES2003.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/RES2003.pdf It's an economic model of how idealized humans might work! It literally says nothing about real humans or children. The second piece of evidence comes from the founder of this website excelatlife.com A website by a psychologist who treats anxiety and depression, and "Dr. Frank's strong interest in Eastern philosophies and Buddhist psychology has led her to train in various forms of Tai Chi/Qi Gong as well as other mindfulness methods for over 15 years. She is a third degree black belt in American Kenpo and continues her involvement in martial arts at the Martial Arts Center." She knows about as much about childhood education as you do. Maybe your statement is right, but your evidence is non-evidence.
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      That was just a Google result that I scanned and found reasonable, so I have no great desire to defend it strongly, but: The economics paper is trying to reconcile the economics orthodoxy of "incentives matter" with the experimental evidence (that it references from across decades) that incentives can in some cases hurt. It's intro is a decent survey of the issue, and has the meta benefit that economists if they could prove this effect didn't happen would be happy to prove that. Instead they are trying to adjust their model to account for it. > Kohn (1993) surveys the results from a variety of programmes aimed at getting people to lose weight, stop smoking, or wear seat belts, either offering or not offering rewards. Consistently, individ- uals in “reward” treatments showed better compliance at the beginning, but worse compliance in the long run than those in the “no-reward” or “untreated controls” groups. Taken together, these many findings indicate a limited impact of rewards on “engagement” (current activity) and a negative one on “re-engagement” (persistence). > A related body of work transposes these ideas from the educational setting to the workplace. In well-known contributions, Etzioni (1971) argues that workers find control of their behaviour via incentives “alienating” and “dehumanizing”, and Deci and Ryan (1985) devote a chapter of their book to a criticism of the use of performance-contingent rewards in the work setting.2 > And, without condemning contingent compensation, Baron and Kreps (1999, p. 99) conclude that: There is no doubt that the benefits of [piece-rate systems or pay-for-performance incentive devices] can be considerably compromised when the systems undermine workers’ intrinsic motivation. > Kreps (1997) reports his uneasiness when teaching human resources management and discussing the impact of incentive devices in a way that is somewhat foreign to standard economic theory. And indeed, recent experimental evidence on the use of performance- contingent wages or fines confirms that explicit incentives sometimes result in worse compliance than incomplete labour contracts (Fehr and Falk (1999), Fehr and Schmidt (2000), Gneezy and Rustichini (2000a)). Relatedly, Gneezy and Rustichini (2000b) find that offering monetary incentives to subjects for answering questions taken from an IQ test strictly decreases their performance, unless the “piece rate” is raised to a high enough level. In the policy domain, Frey and Oberholzer-Gee (1997) surveyed citizens in Swiss cantons where the government was considering locating a nuclear waste repository; they found that the fraction supporting siting of the facility in their community fell by half when public compensation was offered.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
cgriswald 3y ago
Learning is a kid’s job. A kid is working a decades long project to figure out how he wants to spend his life and do the work to make that happen. Imagine facing that and being told you have to do something you aren’t interested in doing without a clear concept of why it even matters… and without really any say in the matter anyway. I don’t know if I would have the tenacity to tackle a twenty year project partially against my will and I don’t have to worry about developing socially, growing physically, etc. Pay the damn kids, I say.

My son struggled to read when he was young. Over the summer we set a goal and attached a payout to it. Yes, I bribed my son to read. The problem is now I can't get him to stop. Money talks.

hguant 3y ago

My math teacher in 6th grade had a conversation with my parents that essentially went "he's not going to learn algebra from the Hobbit, but I feel bad telling him not to read" There are worse problems to have!

stevekemp 3y ago

We've got a six year old, just about to start school in a few months, and we've done the same thing. We started giving him a quarter of a lego minecraft set every time he read two pages of text - either in English or Finnish - then we had to move to a bunch of bricks every time he read a full chapter. The surge in his effort, and abilities, was almost frighteningly quick. (Here in Finland kids can go to daycare from 1 year old, and start in pre-school when they're six. School-proper starts at seven.)

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
I don't think you can parent without some level of bribing but note that research has been done suggesting that extrinsic motivation can negatively impact intrinsic motivation. One personal anecdote of mine is a school friend who announced that he was never going to read a book again after finishing school (with good grades). For him, reading books was not a thing he loved, just a means to an end. https://www.weareteachers.com/understanding-intrinsic-vs-extrinsic-motivation-in-the-classroom/ https://www.weareteachers.com/understanding-intrinsic-vs-ext...
- light_hue_1 3y ago
  Sadly, the link you provided shows how much nonsense there is in this space. They provide two sources of "evidence". Both of them are total junk. For example, they say: As educators, we have heard a lot about the downside of extrinsic motivation. Studies have shown that extrinsic motivation produces only short-term effects, at best. One study out of Princeton University goes so far as to say, “External incentives are weak reinforcers in the short run, and negative reinforcers in the long run.” That study? https://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/RES2003.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/RES2003.pdf It's an economic model of how idealized humans might work! It literally says nothing about real humans or children. The second piece of evidence comes from the founder of this website excelatlife.com A website by a psychologist who treats anxiety and depression, and "Dr. Frank's strong interest in Eastern philosophies and Buddhist psychology has led her to train in various forms of Tai Chi/Qi Gong as well as other mindfulness methods for over 15 years. She is a third degree black belt in American Kenpo and continues her involvement in martial arts at the Martial Arts Center." She knows about as much about childhood education as you do. Maybe your statement is right, but your evidence is non-evidence.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    That was just a Google result that I scanned and found reasonable, so I have no great desire to defend it strongly, but: The economics paper is trying to reconcile the economics orthodoxy of "incentives matter" with the experimental evidence (that it references from across decades) that incentives can in some cases hurt. It's intro is a decent survey of the issue, and has the meta benefit that economists if they could prove this effect didn't happen would be happy to prove that. Instead they are trying to adjust their model to account for it. > Kohn (1993) surveys the results from a variety of programmes aimed at getting people to lose weight, stop smoking, or wear seat belts, either offering or not offering rewards. Consistently, individ- uals in “reward” treatments showed better compliance at the beginning, but worse compliance in the long run than those in the “no-reward” or “untreated controls” groups. Taken together, these many findings indicate a limited impact of rewards on “engagement” (current activity) and a negative one on “re-engagement” (persistence). > A related body of work transposes these ideas from the educational setting to the workplace. In well-known contributions, Etzioni (1971) argues that workers find control of their behaviour via incentives “alienating” and “dehumanizing”, and Deci and Ryan (1985) devote a chapter of their book to a criticism of the use of performance-contingent rewards in the work setting.2 > And, without condemning contingent compensation, Baron and Kreps (1999, p. 99) conclude that: There is no doubt that the benefits of [piece-rate systems or pay-for-performance incentive devices] can be considerably compromised when the systems undermine workers’ intrinsic motivation. > Kreps (1997) reports his uneasiness when teaching human resources management and discussing the impact of incentive devices in a way that is somewhat foreign to standard economic theory. And indeed, recent experimental evidence on the use of performance- contingent wages or fines confirms that explicit incentives sometimes result in worse compliance than incomplete labour contracts (Fehr and Falk (1999), Fehr and Schmidt (2000), Gneezy and Rustichini (2000a)). Relatedly, Gneezy and Rustichini (2000b) find that offering monetary incentives to subjects for answering questions taken from an IQ test strictly decreases their performance, unless the “piece rate” is raised to a high enough level. In the policy domain, Frey and Oberholzer-Gee (1997) surveyed citizens in Swiss cantons where the government was considering locating a nuclear waste repository; they found that the fraction supporting siting of the facility in their community fell by half when public compensation was offered.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

cgriswald 3y ago

Learning is a kid’s job. A kid is working a decades long project to figure out how he wants to spend his life and do the work to make that happen. Imagine facing that and being told you have to do something you aren’t interested in doing without a clear concept of why it even matters… and without really any say in the matter anyway. I don’t know if I would have the tenacity to tackle a twenty year project partially against my will and I don’t have to worry about developing socially, growing physically, etc. Pay the damn kids, I say.