Last year I created an incentive structure for my son in our home school. For every book we finished, he earned a certain amount. I ended up giving him around $500 (not bad for a 10 year old). And while he enjoyed the money, he actually came to like a lot of things as he saw that he was good at them. We modeled it a lot on some of the behavioral conditioning work we had done with him and his therapist in years past, and while I felt quite squeamish about it at first, I ended up feeling pretty good about it at the end.
Wow Latham, I wish I’d have spent more time talking to you and asking questions as I was researching for this piece.
I’m curious about 2 things:
1) Do you think your son would’ve become good at those things—and grown to like being good at them—without the incentives you provided? If not, why?
2) And is there a person or resource you can recommend for me to dip my toe into behavioural conditioning, particularly as it relates to early values formation in kids?
1) Obviously examining the counterfactual is really difficult, so let's start by saying I don't really know. But, the way I think about likes and dislikes is that a lot of childhood motivation isn't as clear as internal vs. external. In fact, many things can influence childhood (and adult) motivation. Many things facilitate enjoyment and hence motivation, but being good at something is a motivating factor that both of my kids have. I think lots of kids do. So is peer recognition, and external rewards.
So do I think he naturally would have realized he liked math, or reading difficult texts without any sort of push? No, I don't. If it's between doing that work and playing outside, he's going to play outside and then school gets harder because the activation energy to get back into it is high. And without that level of success, his motivation would have always been low. In other words, I believe that motivation comes downstream of early successes and his identity as someone who is successful.
Now do I think there are other incentives I could have used that didn't involve money? Absolutely. I have worked really hard on the relationship I have with him, and I could have leaned on that relationship to make him do the work and get started. I also could have shown him my own love of these subjects and hoped that he would value getting to spend that time with me. I think that would have worked, albeit much slower and with a lot of struggle between us at the beginning.
Ultimately, it came down to what was easiest for my goals. I wanted him to get started and do the work. I wanted him to create a personal identity as someone who can work hard and who is good at learning. I wanted that identity to reinforce itself. And the most expedient way to get that started was using something else he already wanted (money). But I also took away some of those rewards as he developed that identity. And his motivation hasn't waned without the cash incentive. If anything, it's transferred to the relationship he and I have together and wanting to get to learn with each other.
2) I wrote this about the experience of paying him to do school: https://lathamt.substack.com/p/motivating-my-child-to-learn. As far as peer reviewed resources, I'm not really sure. A lot of what I learned was inspired by ABA procedures, but is also taken to his personal context. I worked 1:1 with his therapist for years to understand why we were doing what we were, and to make sure I was comfortable with what the outcomes were going to be. I'm not sure how much of what she did was "traditional ABA" vs. her own interpretation of that. And I think the research on shaping environments to generate outcomes which ultimately shape motivation is pretty sparse. I'm sorry that's not more helpful.
I'm happy to talk more about this over the phone if you want as well. It's a pretty big subject that I feel like I've only scratched the surface of.
This was really interesting Harrison! I appreciate that you were “thinking out loud” about this question and brought in sources. I also feel a knee jerk reaction to the question, but wasn’t very knowledgeable outside of that. The comments add a lot of color too! My takeaway is that the issue isn’t the incentive so much as figuring out how to help students get through the stage of short term thinking and payoffs. Play (or whatever thing is top of mind) vs work that’ll help them learn more. I wonder if that’s the bias in looking at Alpha School’s success. My impression is it’s kids whose families probably fall in a certain demographic, at the least people who can afford a $40k price tag and know about something like Alpha School. That’s what made the research you shared so interesting too.
Wow Harrison, this is really intriguing. Curious whether Fryer also studied any metrics on the attitudes and emotional shifts. You wrote about "intrinsic" motivation and that made me wonder about what IS intrinsic motivation exactly? Can you increase intrinsic motivation and if yes, how?
Reminds me of studies that show sometimes money is not enough to keep people in their jobs if they don't feel they're contributing or engaged in meaningful work.
My intuitive take is that extrinsic rewards have their place on a conditional basis. After all, schools DO special events, contests, etc to motivate kids. It might not be cash but public recognition (for example) is a very potent reward for people.
Another thing that comes up for me is that although people are constantly worrying and complaining about the state of public education, we send quite a different message when we're constantly underpaying the people who educate our kids and complaining about how expensive it is, the tax burden, etc.
Hey Judy! Great questions and reflections. Fryer’s study showed that the treatment group saved more money than the control group, which could potentially be a sign that certain attitudes or emotional shifts were taking place among the children.
I also remember Fryer telling a story about a young boy of around 12 coming up to him to ask if he could “manage Fryer’s money.” Fryer played along with the kid a little, saying he’d consider allowing him to mange his money if the kid could present a convincing “investment plan.” I think this also potentially sheds a little bit of light on what some of the kids were thinking and feeling about the experiments.
But beyond that, I’m really not sure. It’s a very good question. I wish that more of the educational and political establishments had taken Fryer’s findings more seriously and continued to fund his work, as I’m sure he could and would have discovered many more useful insights, including answers to your questions.
Researchers can absolutely test kids for attitudinal shifts such as willingness to volunteer time to help a classmate. Wish Fryer had so he could have pointed out he wasn't trying to create little mercenaries.
I recently read another post about Alpha School paying students, and I also got an uneasy feeling about the idea. For me, the main problems are that kids may not enjoy what they’re doing, especially if it’s something they liked before starting, as well as not learning how to enjoy learning.
But if it works, it’s worth considering. I’ve been thinking about how I might implement something similar with the kids in my family.
After reading your essay, I think I would pay children as a way to build momentum, but only in subjects they are weak at. And I would limit each child to being paid for just one or two areas, their weakest subject, or the one they like the least, to avoid them losing interest in things they already enjoy.
Personally, I think I would have benefited massively if I’d been paid to read books. I don’t think I read a single book between the ages of 12 and 20. If I’d read even a little for money, I suspect I would have learned to read more efficiently, found it easier (so read more), or at least been exposed to new ideas and book topics.
This is really interesting Harrison! So, one thing I'd like to establish is that learning itself is a wicked problem (meaning not clearly defined like chess) so controlling variables is tough to do,
But I'm really curious on the social factor here. If you put one student who is incentivized to learn in a group of students who aren't paid to learn, does that incentivized student keep learning? Or do the other unincentivized students start learning?
Group pressure can also impact learning. Maybe I missed it but are the students learning in groups with the guides or 1:1? I've tutored K-12 kids since 2017 & I've found 1:1 to work almost always in favor for the student's learning because they have specific styles.
Have you looked at the work of Paulo Freire? In 1947, he taught illiterate people in Brazil how to read. Within 1 month, 300 working class Brazilians were literate. Paulo was jailed by the dictatorship for decades for his work, but he kept writing about his approach to education. he crafted a book called "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed" which was written behind bars.
Just started learning about him & agreeing with his style of teaching and mastery. Mastery, not in the reductionist sense of learning things piecemeal, but mastery in terms of following curiosity. "Piranesi" by Susanna Clarke teaches this well. I wrote an essay on months ago https://mostories.substack.com/p/how-piranesi-destroyed-everything
Last year I created an incentive structure for my son in our home school. For every book we finished, he earned a certain amount. I ended up giving him around $500 (not bad for a 10 year old). And while he enjoyed the money, he actually came to like a lot of things as he saw that he was good at them. We modeled it a lot on some of the behavioral conditioning work we had done with him and his therapist in years past, and while I felt quite squeamish about it at first, I ended up feeling pretty good about it at the end.
Wow Latham, I wish I’d have spent more time talking to you and asking questions as I was researching for this piece.
I’m curious about 2 things:
1) Do you think your son would’ve become good at those things—and grown to like being good at them—without the incentives you provided? If not, why?
2) And is there a person or resource you can recommend for me to dip my toe into behavioural conditioning, particularly as it relates to early values formation in kids?
1) Obviously examining the counterfactual is really difficult, so let's start by saying I don't really know. But, the way I think about likes and dislikes is that a lot of childhood motivation isn't as clear as internal vs. external. In fact, many things can influence childhood (and adult) motivation. Many things facilitate enjoyment and hence motivation, but being good at something is a motivating factor that both of my kids have. I think lots of kids do. So is peer recognition, and external rewards.
So do I think he naturally would have realized he liked math, or reading difficult texts without any sort of push? No, I don't. If it's between doing that work and playing outside, he's going to play outside and then school gets harder because the activation energy to get back into it is high. And without that level of success, his motivation would have always been low. In other words, I believe that motivation comes downstream of early successes and his identity as someone who is successful.
Now do I think there are other incentives I could have used that didn't involve money? Absolutely. I have worked really hard on the relationship I have with him, and I could have leaned on that relationship to make him do the work and get started. I also could have shown him my own love of these subjects and hoped that he would value getting to spend that time with me. I think that would have worked, albeit much slower and with a lot of struggle between us at the beginning.
Ultimately, it came down to what was easiest for my goals. I wanted him to get started and do the work. I wanted him to create a personal identity as someone who can work hard and who is good at learning. I wanted that identity to reinforce itself. And the most expedient way to get that started was using something else he already wanted (money). But I also took away some of those rewards as he developed that identity. And his motivation hasn't waned without the cash incentive. If anything, it's transferred to the relationship he and I have together and wanting to get to learn with each other.
2) I wrote this about the experience of paying him to do school: https://lathamt.substack.com/p/motivating-my-child-to-learn. As far as peer reviewed resources, I'm not really sure. A lot of what I learned was inspired by ABA procedures, but is also taken to his personal context. I worked 1:1 with his therapist for years to understand why we were doing what we were, and to make sure I was comfortable with what the outcomes were going to be. I'm not sure how much of what she did was "traditional ABA" vs. her own interpretation of that. And I think the research on shaping environments to generate outcomes which ultimately shape motivation is pretty sparse. I'm sorry that's not more helpful.
I'm happy to talk more about this over the phone if you want as well. It's a pretty big subject that I feel like I've only scratched the surface of.
This was really interesting Harrison! I appreciate that you were “thinking out loud” about this question and brought in sources. I also feel a knee jerk reaction to the question, but wasn’t very knowledgeable outside of that. The comments add a lot of color too! My takeaway is that the issue isn’t the incentive so much as figuring out how to help students get through the stage of short term thinking and payoffs. Play (or whatever thing is top of mind) vs work that’ll help them learn more. I wonder if that’s the bias in looking at Alpha School’s success. My impression is it’s kids whose families probably fall in a certain demographic, at the least people who can afford a $40k price tag and know about something like Alpha School. That’s what made the research you shared so interesting too.
Great piece!
Thanks Will! I’m curious—what was it you enjoyed most? And did it raise any burning questions for you?
Wow Harrison, this is really intriguing. Curious whether Fryer also studied any metrics on the attitudes and emotional shifts. You wrote about "intrinsic" motivation and that made me wonder about what IS intrinsic motivation exactly? Can you increase intrinsic motivation and if yes, how?
Reminds me of studies that show sometimes money is not enough to keep people in their jobs if they don't feel they're contributing or engaged in meaningful work.
My intuitive take is that extrinsic rewards have their place on a conditional basis. After all, schools DO special events, contests, etc to motivate kids. It might not be cash but public recognition (for example) is a very potent reward for people.
Another thing that comes up for me is that although people are constantly worrying and complaining about the state of public education, we send quite a different message when we're constantly underpaying the people who educate our kids and complaining about how expensive it is, the tax burden, etc.
Hey Judy! Great questions and reflections. Fryer’s study showed that the treatment group saved more money than the control group, which could potentially be a sign that certain attitudes or emotional shifts were taking place among the children.
I also remember Fryer telling a story about a young boy of around 12 coming up to him to ask if he could “manage Fryer’s money.” Fryer played along with the kid a little, saying he’d consider allowing him to mange his money if the kid could present a convincing “investment plan.” I think this also potentially sheds a little bit of light on what some of the kids were thinking and feeling about the experiments.
But beyond that, I’m really not sure. It’s a very good question. I wish that more of the educational and political establishments had taken Fryer’s findings more seriously and continued to fund his work, as I’m sure he could and would have discovered many more useful insights, including answers to your questions.
Researchers can absolutely test kids for attitudinal shifts such as willingness to volunteer time to help a classmate. Wish Fryer had so he could have pointed out he wasn't trying to create little mercenaries.
Little Mercenaries. That’s a great term!
I recently read another post about Alpha School paying students, and I also got an uneasy feeling about the idea. For me, the main problems are that kids may not enjoy what they’re doing, especially if it’s something they liked before starting, as well as not learning how to enjoy learning.
But if it works, it’s worth considering. I’ve been thinking about how I might implement something similar with the kids in my family.
After reading your essay, I think I would pay children as a way to build momentum, but only in subjects they are weak at. And I would limit each child to being paid for just one or two areas, their weakest subject, or the one they like the least, to avoid them losing interest in things they already enjoy.
Personally, I think I would have benefited massively if I’d been paid to read books. I don’t think I read a single book between the ages of 12 and 20. If I’d read even a little for money, I suspect I would have learned to read more efficiently, found it easier (so read more), or at least been exposed to new ideas and book topics.
This is really interesting Harrison! So, one thing I'd like to establish is that learning itself is a wicked problem (meaning not clearly defined like chess) so controlling variables is tough to do,
But I'm really curious on the social factor here. If you put one student who is incentivized to learn in a group of students who aren't paid to learn, does that incentivized student keep learning? Or do the other unincentivized students start learning?
Group pressure can also impact learning. Maybe I missed it but are the students learning in groups with the guides or 1:1? I've tutored K-12 kids since 2017 & I've found 1:1 to work almost always in favor for the student's learning because they have specific styles.
Have you looked at the work of Paulo Freire? In 1947, he taught illiterate people in Brazil how to read. Within 1 month, 300 working class Brazilians were literate. Paulo was jailed by the dictatorship for decades for his work, but he kept writing about his approach to education. he crafted a book called "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed" which was written behind bars.
Just started learning about him & agreeing with his style of teaching and mastery. Mastery, not in the reductionist sense of learning things piecemeal, but mastery in terms of following curiosity. "Piranesi" by Susanna Clarke teaches this well. I wrote an essay on months ago https://mostories.substack.com/p/how-piranesi-destroyed-everything