As I watched the Daniel Pink and Alfie Kohn videos and read the Wikipedia article on motivation, I was repeatedly drawn back to the idea of mechanical vs. cognitive tasks. Each of these point to the fact that incentivizing mechanical tasks is extremely effective. Clean your room, you can have dessert. Do your homework, you can have a star. My school follows the PBIS model and our administrators rave about the successes of the program. If our students follow the rules, comply, obey, they get wristbands. If a teacher writes too many behavior referrals, s/he is called down for meeting about how to improve the classroom management. The result...fewer referrals in our school for the past two years than the previous five! Success....right...
Seth Godin's book Linchpin includes a section entitled "We get what we focus on." I think this directly applies to this external motivation in schools. If a school focuses on training students to follow the rules and get higher test scores, that will most likely happen. But what service is that to students? In the world after their formal education period, are they prepared to accomplish great tasks? Or simply follow a new set of rules?
I do think there has to be a median between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the elementary and middle school atmosphere. Many of these students are so controlled by their "drives" that intrinsic motivation to read an article is never going to win out over their extrinsic motivation for Doritos. The Wikipedia articles stated that intrinsic motivation in schools drops between third and ninth grades. My first thought was...isn't third grade about the time when schools begin to use standardized testing as a measure for success? My second thought was...isn't high school about the time when students can choose what they learn? I'm not sure how to find a happy median between the two, but I feel it is essential. Pink discusses the ideas of autonomy, mastery, and purpose as the new model for employee motivation. Letting elementary students have these three without any guidelines would probably be disasterous, but there needs to be some time in the day where students can experience success in these fields as well.