The Art of Bribery

 

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” said Walt Whitman and I know what he means. I speak and write a lot about motivating children to work hard and come out strongly against the old method of punishment—“do this or I’ll hit you!”—and the newer methods of reward—“do this and the class will have a pizza party.” They both imply that “this” is not worth doing for its own sake. Learning then becomes an economic transaction, either paying off the kids with carrots (well, more likely, cookies) or taking privileges away from them, threatening them (and in the old days), hitting them with the stick. I cite Daniel Pink’s excellent book Drive which acknowledges the carrot and the stick as still used and useful to get short term results—all you parents and grandparents out there know exactly what he’s talking about as life with children becomes a constant negotiation at the bargaining table. Often at the dinner table— “finish your spinach and then you’ll get dessert!” 

 

Pink rightly suggests that there is more to the matter. That while we are all vulnerable to short-term rewards and punishments, we also share some deeper drives that motivate us to do our actual best work. One is our urge toward Mastery, the great pleasure of learning to do something well (alongside the great frustration of not initially being able to do it). A second is autonomy, our desire to find our own way to achieve something that fits our way of thinking and doing, allows us to accomplish it following our unique innate wiring. The third is purpose, a sense that we have chosen something (or been chosen by it) that is not only worthy of our attention, but brings something larger to the table, some sense of beauty or usefulness to the greater community. If you organize your teaching around these three insights, you can create a class of truly motivated students who are happily engaged and working hard simply for the pleasure of doing things well. As someone who indeed has taught in just this way, I can testify as to the results. Everyone wins. 

 

But I do like to throw some tasty little carrots into the mix in a playful way. My classes sometimes feel like an ongoing Jeopardy game, as I toss out a question with a point value attached. Some are important things I actually want them to know: “For 75 points, who began his musical career in reform school?” “Who walked 200 miles to hear someone play the organ?” “Who recently read a poem at a Presidential Inauguration?” Some has to do with our own school history. “What was the original name of our school?” “What world famous musicians have visited our school?” “Who was the only child to beat Doug in the Cookie Jar?” *

 

I change the points according to the difficulty of the question. One time a child asked, “What are these points actually for?!!!” I replied, “I’m not allowed to tell you until after you graduate.” At which point I would say, if asked (I never was),  “Absolutely nothing. Except for the little spark of fun and satisfaction that you got from answering correctly.”

 

Recently, my little game of offering something in exchange for doing something has been upgraded with my 12-year-old granddaughter Zadie. Zadie is super-intelligent in many ways, but she is stubborn about reading for her own pleasure and her schooling has far too little rigor for my taste. Which leaves her using her great memory skills to sing along with the Eminem songs she listens to. So in my recent visits, I’ve decided to up the ante and use some artful bribes to get her motivated. She has been good at math, but is losing both her interest and her confidence, so when I learned a fascinating math trick, I offered to pay her $10 if she could figure out how it worked. She loves money, so off she went and two days later, figured it out! She wanted an ice cream cone the other day, but I was less than thrilled with the $8 cost. So I agreed to buy it for her if she let me read 8 minutes to her from my new Jazz, Joy and Justice book. Not my choice of how to get her interested in Ella Fitzgerald and Hazel Scott, but hey, it worked! The other day, I played jazz improvisations of American Christmas Carols and offered both her and Malik 25 cents for each one they could name. It was hard for them both, but when I finally quoted a snippet of the actual melody, she got two in a row.

 

But my finest triumph was buying her Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman book with four poems for Christmas. Not the kind of gift most 12-year-olds would open and shout, “Wow! A book of poetry!! Thank you SO MUCH!!!” But her eyes lit up when I offered to pay her $20 to memorize one of the poems and recite it to me. We went on to spend some five more days in the Palm Springs area together and it seemed like both of us has forgotten about it. Yesterday morning, my wife and I rose early to begin the long drive back starting no later than 8:30 am, while Zadie and family would stay until 2 and fly back later that day. Zadie normally sleeps until 10 or 11 when on vacation, so I was surprised when she told us the night before she’d wake up early to say goodbye. The first surprise was that she did. But the second was simply extraordinary. She was ready to recite “Still I Rise” to me! We stepped outside and she did! The whole poem! 

 

So no, do not bribe children to learn! Except sometimes. I’d like to think that poem will be useful for her, not only with all she’s going through as a mixed-race pre-teen kid, but as a companion her whole life. Maybe yes, maybe no, but if yes, it was worth every penny of the $20. Teaching, like art, is knowing the rules and knowing when to break the rules. I broke my own rule by paying someone to learn and it may have been the perfect strategy.

 

Time will tell.

* For those burning with curiosity, the answers to the questions in the third paragraph:

    • Louis Armstrong

    • J.S. Bach

    • Amanda Gorman

    • The San Francisco Montessori School

    • Milt Jackson, Stefon Harris, Bobby McFerrin, Herlin Riley and more

    • Michael Canaveral