Who: US writer and lecturer on education, parenting and motivation. Books include Punished by Rewards (1993; 25th-anniversary edition 2018), No Contest, Beyond Discipline, The Homework Myth (2006), Unconditional Parenting (2005), The Schools Our Children Deserve (1999), The Myth of the Spoiled Child (2014).
Stance: Rewards, praise, grades and punishment are all control (“doing to” rather than “working with”). They erode interest, risk-taking and the quality of thinking, and buy only temporary compliance.
Why it matters for me: The strongest critique in the vault of the reward systems I design. Read it with the counter-literature (Cameron & Pierce 1994; Deci, Koestner & Ryan 1999; Henderlong & Lepper 2002; Cooper et al. 2006), summarised in each note. Kohn is usually directionally right and overstated in degree.
Already in vault: Punished by Rewards (highlights)
Processed notes
- Against competitiveness and rankings
- Beyond discipline - compliance is not commitment
- Five reasons to stop saying Good job
- Grit is persistence regardless of the goal
- Homework should be the exception, not the default
- Rewards undermine interest in the rewarded activity
- The case against grades
Next to process
- The “Mindset” Mindset (growth-mindset critique, 2015)
- “Is Competition Ever Appropriate in a Cooperative Classroom?” (1993); “The Case Against Competition” (1987)