While discarding stickers and stars is difficult enough, getting rid of grades presents a challenge of a different order of magnitude. But go they must, if we are not to undermine the motivation that leads to excellence. Until we make grades disappear, we can take small steps in the right direction. In essence, this means doing everything in our power to help students forget that grades exist. This is radical advice, but advice that can be implemented immediately. That most students have come to see learning as a means to get rewards can make the transition back to intrinsic learning a slow journey. This is no reason to keep feeding them extrinsic motivators, but rather evidence that we haven't a moment to waste in trying to undo the damage rewards have done.

Parents need to think carefully about their motives for pushing children to get better grades. To stop asking about grades on a paper and fussing over report cards does not mean we don't care. It means we care enough about our child to think about the subtler implications of what we are doing.

Instead of conversing about grades we can ask "what did you learn today that was fun?" "How does it feel when you solve a tough math problem?" Students can be encouraged to approach what they are doing with a mind to discovering something rather than "learning about" it. This places the child in a position to experience success and failure not as reward and punishment but as information. The task is emphasized rather than the performance. School administrators can offer parents alternative sources of information about how children are faring. Teachers can limit the number of assignments they grade and offer substantive comments instead, stop grading for effort, and bring students in on the evaluation process.

Source:

Alfie Kohn, Punished By Rewards

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