#249 Best of - Discipline, Punishment & Rewards with Alfie Kohn

Punishment teaches power

Rewards, like punishments, can only get temporary compliance

The more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward

All rewards are sugar coated control

Intrinsic & extrinsic motivation

Talk less, ask more

Kids learn to make good decisions by making decisions, not by being obedient

You can get mindless obedience in the short term if the reward is juicy enough or the punishment is awful enough.

What you can never get is a child who is happy, more ethical, more compassionate, caring or more of an independent thinker.