Re:Gold Stars

["Richard Hulse" <RHulse@radionz.co.nz>]

Anton O. Tolman, Ph.D. wrote:
> The lure of Gold Stars is subtle and pernicious.

It is built into the current system of which we are a part.....

I have a 8 yo son and 5 yo daughter. I have struggled with Gold Stars
also.

I have noticed the outcomes of different approaches to their
'education' which support Anton's post.

Anton:
>  If you recall my posting on Haywood's discussion of intrinsic
> motivation, true intrinsic motivation is generated by the
psychological and
> internal sensation of dealing with a task *for its own sake*.


Reading:
My daughter is learning to read. She enjoys stories and wants to read.
We do not have to do anything.
My son also loves to read. He is picking his own books and choses
reading for as a leasure activity.

We have read to them almost from birth, working alongside them as their
interest in stories, and now in words and reading, grows. Both are
intrinsically motivated to read because of the joy of reading stories.
We demonstrated this joy from the moment we started reading to them.
(This is a retrospective view of events - we did not plan it.)

Anton:
> The children motivated primarily by extrinsic rewards
> of whatever type, stopped.  Thus, this is not a trivial issue. 


Piano:
My Son loves music. He wanted to learn the piano. He did well at the
start, doing it for the joy of making sounds, and practiced a lot. He
even did some basic (and quite good I thought) composition.

As the year went on he started to lose interest. My wife tried to work
with him and in the end resorted to a star chart to get him to do
practice. Once the joy is gone, stars become like drugs, more is
required for the same effect.

Now I see that there has been a change from intrinsic to extrinsic
motivation, followed by no motivation. I think this is a typical
pattern.  

So the challenge is to see if we can change the environment (system) to
revert back to the original (natural) intrinsic state. I am starting
with a theory. The lessons are done in a group, and he finds them too
long - the negative experince of this possibly results in less
motivation to practice. Next year we will try, for a term, individual
lessons and working with him to assist in experiencing the joy of music
making. 

Had we been more observant as parents, we would have seen this earlier.
In the end we may have to accept that he does not wish to continue with
the Piano.

There are (unfortunately) many other examples from home and the
office!

Anton O. Tolman, Ph.D. wrote:
>  Learning to promote and enhance intrinsic rather 
> than gold star-driven extrinsic motivation is a key 
> to assuring lifelong learning and enthusiasm for taking
> on difficult new tasks.

It is difficult to rid from ones self years of (bad) training and
conditioning. It is even more difficult to remove sociatal influences on
your children (in fact you can't - you can only teach them to be aware
of them). 

There are a couple of points to make from all this:

1. The alternative to Gold stars is to work in partnership with the
student (to promote and enhance...).

2. There is a need to experience personal joy in this process (compare
the efffect of enthusiatic teachers [who work with you] with those who
have grown to hate the job [talk at you]).

3. You must change your theory and be committed to it BEFORE trying new
ways of doing things. If you do not, you can easily end up falling back
on Gold stars.

In relation to this, I found the paper UPDATING THE BOS (Brain
Operating System) By Jean-Marie Gogue and Myron Tribus (on the DEN) most
helpful in understanding the interaction of the (underlying) theory and
the outworking (application) of it, and some of the issues arising from
the changing the system.

Action without theory is simply an empty technique!

This all makes me think of the book Pilgrims Progess - "The path is
narrow and not without difficulties and there are many who wander from
it." 

Regards,

Richard Hulse
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