A Personal View on the Punishment Versus Rewards Debate
Saturday, March 4, 2006
Lifespan Development and Learning
In the education and parenting fields, there is often a debate whether to use punishments or rewards to motivate students and influence behavior. There are supporters of both methods and there are people who believe that neither punishments nor rewards should be used to encourage learning. As each individual holds his or her own beliefs about the appropriate use of these tools in learning, it is important to spend some time considering the debate.
As a child in Trinidad, I remember that fear of punishment in school was a great motivator for my good behavior and desire to perform better academically. I also remember, however, that not everyone else in my school had the same response to punishment. My friend, for example, seemed to love getting in trouble and often went home with welts from the bamboo cane. What irked my teachers even more was that he was also one of the top students in the class. For me, the threat of punishment was a form of aversive stimuli and was enough to cause me to behave a certain learned accepted way.