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Rewards may cut children's achievements
Parenting
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The media recently reported “new” research findings to the effect that rewards often backfire and self-esteem is not the wonderful, uplifting personal attribute once thought. As a result, schools are rethinking their teaching and classroom management philosophies.
Wrong again! Research showing that rewards often backfire and revealing the dark side of self-esteem has been available for quite some time. Furthermore, the Internet permits anyone who is interested to access this information. This supposedly “new” stuff simply illustrates the disconnect between research and practice in American education.
More directly put, educational methodology is more driven by fad than fact.
Was objective research done to verify the efficacy of the so-called “open classroom” before that particular philosophy captured America’s schools in the early 1970s? No. Somebody sold an idea to a bunch of education bureaucrats, and millions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money was wasted as a consequence.
How about outcome-based education? Again, the research done to validate that particular flop was of the sort my experimental-methods professor would have used to illustrate sloppy research methods. And again, millions of dollars, etc. That’s been pretty much the story of American education “reform” for 40 years.
For almost two decades, research done by people like Roy Baumeister of Florida State University has shown, as conclusively as social science research is capable of showing, that high self-esteem is associated with antisocial behavior.
Think, for example, bullying. It appears that the higher one’s self-regard, the lower his regard for others. People with high self-regard believe themselves to be entitled. What they want, they believe they deserve to have. Because they deserve what they want, the ends justify the means. Think, for example, Bernie Madoff.   
The functional attribute is one that went out with the rest of the bathwater in the 1960s: humility and modesty. People who are humble pay attention to you. They try to figure out what they can do to help you and make you feel comfortable. It’s about you, not them.
On the other side of the equation, people who possess high self-esteem want people to pay attention to and do things for them. In fact, they tend to get upset if people don’t pay attention to them and cater to them.
It has been known for quite some time that rewards often depress achievement levels. Likewise, people with high self-esteem tend to perform below their level of ability. Why? Because they believe that anything they do is worthy of merit; therefore, they do the minimum, if that.
A recent conversation with a Navy commander illustrates the point. He told me that he deals all the time with young recruits who believe that they should be rewarded for whatever they do, whenever they do it, even if they do nothing more than what is minimally expected of them. They have acquired this very entitled, uncooperative attitude from their parents and schools.
Their parents can be forgiven. They simply were doing what publications and talking heads told them to do. But educators should have had the wherewithal to ask the fundamental question: Is there compelling evidence that giving rewards for adequate or even improved performance actually improves long-term academic achievement?
Concerning classroom behavior, rewards often backfire. Give a child who is aggressive during free play a reward for not being aggressive for 10 minutes, and he is very likely to turn right around and be aggressive. He realizes, intuitively, that the only reason he is being singled out for a reward is precisely because he is aggressive; therefore, to keep the rewards coming he must continue to aggress.
If school reform fads had paid off, then today’s achievement levels would be higher and classroom behavior would be better than they were in the 1960s.
The opposite is the case. The taxpayer slowly is catching on, evidenced by a growing revolt against public education’s never-ending cry for more money. Accountability can be a painful thing.

A psychologist, Rosemond answers questions at www.rosemond.com.

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From the book 'Outliers' comes proof that good health is more than just genetics
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Friends Jim Young, left, Mike Natale, Jeff Natale and Ryan Kiernan were on Greenwich High School football team together and Jim and Mike were captains. Jim, who was the youngest in Sherry Young's family, was welcome in the homes of the other three boys who still had siblings around and grandparents near. - photo by Sherry Young
As I look back on my life and the lives of others, both personally and in the reading I have done, I am convinced of the necessity of positive human contact in our lives. We are doubly blessed when we are able to make good friends or are a part of a family where we are accepted and loved.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers tells of a time in the 1950s when Dr. Stewart Wolf met a physician who practiced in the area of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto was settled by a group of Italian families from Roseto, Italy, who re-created their life again in America.

This was in the 1950s before drugs and measures to prevent heart disease became important. In their conversation the physician said, You know, Ive been practicing for 17 years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of 65 with heart disease.

Wolf was surprised by these words as, It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.

Wolf enlisted the aid of a sociologist and friend John Bruhn to help him. They found, There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didnt have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didnt have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. Thats it.

They checked into diet, genetics and possibilities of something in the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania but nothing made sense.

What they found was that Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. (Researchers) learned about the extended family clans that underlay the towns social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

What they found eventually convinced the medical establishment to look beyond the individual and understand the culture people are part of their friends, families and town they came from. They determined that the people we surround ourselves with and the values of the world we inhabit have a profound effect on who we are.

Likely, this study could have been done with other ethnicities. However, my family's experiences with the Italian families in Connecticut ring true to the study. Our hungry and growing sons, especially our youngest son, Jim, who was left home alone with two beady-eyed parents, all had some memorable experiences being fed and loved in the Cos Cob multigenerational families. Proof of the African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.

We live in an age when the contact we have with people often is on the internet, and many of us live among strangers. Unless we make the effort to reach out, we will become isolated, especially as we age. The Rosetan study is proof that reaching out and communicating may be good for our health.
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