In my attempts to motivate myself to do schoolwork, I've been trying to bribe myself-promising that if I get good grades, I can buy certain things for myself. But I've realized it's a faulty idea. Say, for example, I can buy myself a new video game if I get a B in math and history. Now that video game must be fairly important to me, since I'm using it as a motivator.

If I don't make a B in math and history, then I won't have the pleasure of enjoying the game. I'm essentially telling myself that without good grades, I don't deserve that game. That I don't deserve to have fun. That my grades have the power to make me worthless. I know it's a bit of an overstatement, but these are the implications of my attempt at bribery.

What I'm telling myself is that poor grades should deny me the right to have a good time. Only the grades matter- not my character, not my other accomplishments, not my good and bad deeds outside of school. The grades can almost strip me of my humanity-if I let them. But I'm not going to let them.

If you've read John Gatto's Dumbing Us Down, you'll probably remember his "7 Lesson Schoolteacher." One of those lessons, you may recall, was "provisional self-esteem." School teaches you to base your self-confidence solely on your grades. How you feel about yourself depends upon whether or not you gain the teacher's approval. This kind of thinking, this "provisional self esteem," is extremely destructive, and dangerous. It destroys students' individuality, making them dependent on others for self-confidence.

And unfortunately enough, bribery is a core part of the school system. If you obey your teacher, you'll get a good grade. Your parents will be happy with you. You'll get into college. You'll succeed in life. But since when have grades become the only measure of a person's success?

Bribery makes an ineffective motivator because it places academic performance above students' happiness and freedom. It promotes blind obedience, silently eroding students' ability to think for themselves. In addition, bribery promotes a very narrow-minded view of "success," ignoring the myriad of ways in which one can be successful without school.

If you want that video game, just go out and buy it, no matter what grades you end up with. You deserve it.

Yah, I agree with all that. It's the same reason doing stuff like "Kids, if you eat your vegetables you'll get desert." Desert becomes a forbidden fruit, it also gains more value then it is really worth, since they have to do something they don't like to get it. Not to mention that if they still have that attitude when they are cooking for themselves, they are likely to eat a lot of junk food, never learning the importance of vegetables and that they actually can taste good.

Bribery itself confuses a child's values. While a parent may be well-intentioned in playing the "if you do this, you'll get this" game, the child learns to not care about the intrinsic value of vegetables or learning, but places way too much value on banalities.

Not their fault.

My main problem with treats and rewards is that while it *might* work short term, it is very near-sighted.

People should be able to do necessary things (and by that I don't mean school-work) without the promise of an instant reward. Sometimes the reward will be non-material (a feeling of accomplishment, the happiness of someone you helped, an inner feeling you have done what was right), sometimes the reward will take longer to arrive, and sometimes, we will, despite our efforts, not succeed.

We won't have a parent with a sticker-sheet and wallet in his hand forever, we will have to be able to motivate ourselves, to do what *we* want to.

To put it simply: It's important to have self-discipline. And an instant-reward-for-obeying-a-pointless-command system doesn't teach self-discipline.

Reading this makes me think how lucky I was to have found this site.
I'd still be in the messed up system of bribes and rewards for the long haul. Of course I'm still in school, but it's summer and you don't think about school in summer even though it always looms over you day by day on the horizon.
I can't go back. The bribes are just part of the ever growing problem.

Fun anecdote:

I once asked my father to bribe me by removing my allowance if I didn't finish my weekend homework before Sunday and raising it ever so slightly if I did because I was worried it would get to the point where I wouldn't be able to finish it on Monday. He said that this was stupid and fake and that he wouldn't do it. When I was no longer a straight A student and when I no longer cared so much about money, he asked whether he could bribe me to get As on my finals. He said he'd pay $100 per final, and I told him that I didn't think that would be enough to help.

One of the problems with rewards like this that students get from their parents or themselves is that they are fake, but they're also bad because you end up working for the reward, which reduces your creativity and, more importantly, fun. If you're allowed to do work you want to do, you don't need the reward. Read some of Alfie Kohn's articles about rewards/punishments and competition.