Ahora me atrevo a hacer una traducción-resumen-tergiversación del artículo, en
un intento de asimilarlo para mí y muy quizá para alguna de las familias aquí
expectadoras. Agradecería algún comentario que me ayudara a eliminar mis
agregados arbitrarios en una futura versión corregida de acceso gratuito.

DÁDIVAS QUEBRANTAN PEÑAS
Los castigos manipulan mediante el miedo.
Los premios manipulan mediante la vanidad y el chantaje emocional.
(Chantaje emocional: te hago más demostraciones de amor cuando me complaces,
obedeces...) (Vanidad: deseo de ser aprobado, celebrado por lis demás).
Castigos y premios son el reino del alabinsulto, del palo y la zanahoria. Es un
reino inicuo y despreciable porque sus consecuencias en lis niñis son negativas:
1. Pierden su independencia para decidir cuál es su objetivo y cuándo se
autopremian con la alegría del logro. Se vuelven inseguris.
2. Pierden verdadera motivación en las tareas porque se acaba prefiriendo el
alabo al reto personal y autogestionado. Se siembra desmotivación y desinterés a
la vez que dependencia emocional de las alabanzas relacionadas con los logros
obedientes. Tienen menos tesón para perseverar en las tareas, porque su
motivación es errónea (!corrupción de menores!) y no autónoma.
3. Se abusa de sus necesidades afectivas para conseguir que nos hagan la vida
más fácil, portándose mejor, obedeciendo... Eso acarrea unas vivencia y
comprensión distorsionadas del amor.
4. Se dificulta o elimina su creatividad, ya que al alabar lis llevamos a que
se sientan presionadis a repetir el éxito para volver a obtener alabo ("qué
inteligente es mi niñi"), y entonces evitan cometer errores, evitan el riesgo de
toda tarea creativa.
5. Se debilita el propio juicio de lis niñis: se hacen dependientes de quien
les da aprobación.

Amasándolo todo de otra manera:
El alabinsulto (y el alabo solo) generan dependencia de juicio y emocional y de
metas y medios. Lis niñis se hacen obedientes o rebeldes para llamar la
atención. Se les provoca desinterés, desmotivación debida a su morbosa búsqueda
de aprobación-amor. Poco tesón, poca creatividad. !Casi depresión psíquica!
Se les inculca una heteronomía crónica. No se pilotan a sí mismis. Necesitan
ser pastoreadis. Están enajenadis o descentradis.

Hasta aquí el problema a superar. En el próximo capítulo me meteré con las
soluciones o alternativas.

Un abrazo y antegracias. daf

Hola: el siguiente artículo en inglés hace reflexionar y cuestionar. Hasta dónde
conviene cobar o premiar? Alternativas a la coba, fortalecedoras,
autonomizadoras?
Merece la pena traducirlo?

Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job!"

By Alfie Kohn

NOTE: This article was published in Young Children, September 2001;
and, in abridged form (with the title "Hooked on Praise"), in Parents
Magazine, May 2000.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Hang out at a playground, visit a school, or show up at a child's
birthday party, and there's one phrase you can count on hearing
repeatedly: "Good job!" Even tiny infants are praised for smacking
their hands together ("Good clapping!"). Many of us blurt out these
judgments of our children to the point that it has become almost a
verbal tic.

Plenty of books and articles advise us against relying on punishment,
from spanking to forcible isolation ("time out"). Occasionally
someone will even ask us to rethink the practice of bribing children
with stickers or food. But you'll have to look awfully hard to
find a
discouraging word about what is euphemistically called positive
reinforcement.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, the point here is not to call
into question the importance of supporting and encouraging children,
the need to love them and hug them and help them feel good about
themselves. Praise, however, is a different story entirely. Here's
why.


1. Manipulating children. Suppose you offer a verbal reward to
reinforce the behavior of a two-year-old who eats without spilling,
or a five-year-old who cleans up her art supplies. Who benefits from
this? Is it possible that telling kids they've done a good job
may
have less to do with their emotional needs than with our convenience?

Rheta DeVries, a professor of education at the University of Northern
Iowa, refers to this as "sugar-coated control." Very much like
tangible rewards – or, for that matter, punishments –
it's a way of
doing something to children to get them to comply with our wishes. It
may be effective at producing this result (at least for a while), but
it's very different from working with kids – for example, by
engaging
them in conversation about what makes a classroom (or family)
function smoothly, or how other people are affected by what we have
done -- or failed to do. The latter approach is not only more
respectful but more likely to help kids become thoughtful people.

The reason praise can work in the short run is that young children
are hungry for our approval. But we have a responsibility not to
exploit that dependence for our own convenience. A "Good job!" to
reinforce something that makes our lives a little easier can be an
example of taking advantage of children's dependence. Kids may
also
come to feel manipulated by this, even if they can't quite
explain
why.


2. Creating praise junkies. To be sure, not every use of praise is a
calculated tactic to control children's behavior. Sometimes we
compliment kids just because we're genuinely pleased by what
they've
done. Even then, however, it's worth looking more closely. Rather
than bolstering a child's self-esteem, praise may increase
kids'
dependence on us. The more we say, "I like the way you…." or
"Good
______ing," the more kids come to rely on our evaluations, our
decisions about what's good and bad, rather than learning to form
their own judgments. It leads them to measure their worth in terms of
what will lead us to smile and dole out some more approval.

Mary Budd Rowe, a researcher at the University of Florida, discovered
that students who were praised lavishly by their teachers were more
tentative in their responses, more apt to answer in a questioning
tone of voice ("Um, seven?"). They tended to back off from an idea
they had proposed as soon as an adult disagreed with them. And they
were less likely to persist with difficult tasks or share their ideas
with other students.

In short, "Good job!" doesn't reassure children; ultimately, it
makes
them feel less secure. It may even create a vicious circle such that
the more we slather on the praise, the more kids seem to need it, so
we praise them some more. Sadly, some of these kids will grow into
adults who continue to need someone else to pat them on the head and
tell them whether what they did was OK. Surely this is not what we
want for our daughters and sons.


3. Stealing a child's pleasure. Apart from the issue of
dependence, a
child deserves to take delight in her accomplishments, to feel pride
in what she's learned how to do. She also deserves to decide when
to
feel that way. Every time we say, "Good job!", though, we're
telling
a child how to feel.

To be sure, there are times when our evaluations are appropriate and
our guidance is necessary -- especially with toddlers and
preschoolers. But a constant stream of value judgments is neither
necessary nor useful for children's development. Unfortunately,
we
may not have realized that "Good job!" is just as much an evaluation
as "Bad job!" The most notable feature of a positive judgment
isn't
that it's positive, but that it's a judgment. And people,
including
kids, don't like being judged.

I cherish the occasions when my daughter manages to do something for
the first time, or does something better than she's ever done it
before. But I try to resist the knee-jerk tendency to say, "Good
job!" because I don't want to dilute her joy. I want her to share
her
pleasure with me, not look to me for a verdict. I want her to
exclaim, "I did it!" (which she often does) instead of asking me
uncertainly, "Was that good?"


4. Losing interest. "Good painting!" may get children to keep
painting for as long as we keep watching and praising. But, warns
Lilian Katz, one of the country's leading authorities on early
childhood education, "once attention is withdrawn, many kids
won't
touch the activity again." Indeed, an impressive body of scientific
research has shown that the more we reward people for doing
something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had
to do to get the reward. Now the point isn't to draw, to read, to
think, to create – the point is to get the goody, whether
it's an ice
cream, a sticker, or a "Good job!"

In a troubling study conducted by Joan Grusec at the University of
Toronto, young children who were frequently praised for displays of
generosity tended to be slightly less generous on an everyday basis
than other children were. Every time they had heard "Good sharing!"
or "I'm so proud of you for helping," they became a little less
interested in sharing or helping. Those actions came to be seen not
as something valuable in their own right but as something they had to
do to get that reaction again from an adult. Generosity became a
means to an end.

Does praise motivate kids? Sure. It motivates kids to get praise.
Alas, that's often at the expense of commitment to whatever they
were
doing that prompted the praise.


5. Reducing achievement. As if it weren't bad enough that "Good
job!"
can undermine independence, pleasure, and interest, it can also
interfere with how good a job children actually do. Researchers keep
finding that kids who are praised for doing well at a creative task
tend to stumble at the next task – and they don't do as well
as
children who weren't praised to begin with.

Why does this happen? Partly because the praise creates pressure
to "keep up the good work" that gets in the way of doing so. Partly
because their interest in what they're doing may have declined.
Partly because they become less likely to take risks – a
prerequisite
for creativity – once they start thinking about how to keep those
positive comments coming.

More generally, "Good job!" is a remnant of an approach to psychology
that reduces all of human life to behaviors that can be seen and
measured. Unfortunately, this ignores the thoughts, feelings, and
values that lie behind behaviors. For example, a child may share a
snack with a friend as a way of attracting praise, or as a way of
making sure the other child has enough to eat. Praise for sharing
ignores these different motives. Worse, it actually promotes the less
desirable motive by making children more likely to fish for praise in
the future.

*

Once you start to see praise for what it is – and what it does
–
these constant little evaluative eruptions from adults start to
produce the same effect as fingernails being dragged down a
blackboard. You begin to root for a child to give his teachers or
parents a taste of their own treacle by turning around to them and
saying (in the same saccharine tone of voice), "Good praising!"

Still, it's not an easy habit to break. It can seem strange, at
least
at first, to stop praising; it can feel as though you're being
chilly
or withholding something. But that, it soon becomes clear, suggests
that we praise more because we need to say it than because children
need to hear it. Whenever that's true, it's time to rethink
what
we're doing.

What kids do need is unconditional support, love with no strings
attached. That's not just different from praise – it's
the opposite
of praise. "Good job!" is conditional. It means we're offering
attention and acknowledgement and approval for jumping through our
hoops, for doing things that please us.

This point, you'll notice, is very different from a criticism
that
some people offer to the effect that we give kids too much approval,
or give it too easily. They recommend that we become more miserly
with our praise and demand that kids "earn" it. But the real problem
isn't that children expect to be praised for everything they do
these
days. It's that we're tempted to take shortcuts, to
manipulate kids
with rewards instead of explaining and helping them to develop needed
skills and good values.

So what's the alternative? That depends on the situation, but
whatever we decide to say instead has to be offered in the context of
genuine affection and love for who kids are rather than for what
they've done. When unconditional support is present, "Good job!"
isn't necessary; when it's absent, "Good job!" won't help.

If we're praising positive actions as a way of discouraging
misbehavior, this is unlikely to be effective for long. Even when it
works, we can't really say the child is now "behaving himself";
it
would be more accurate to say the praise is behaving him. The
alternative is to work with the child, to figure out the reasons
he's
acting that way. We may have to reconsider our own requests rather
than just looking for a way to get kids to obey. (Instead of
using "Good job!" to get a four-year-old to sit quietly through a
long class meeting or family dinner, perhaps we should ask whether
it's reasonable to expect a child to do so.)

We also need to bring kids in on the process of making decisions. If
a child is doing something that disturbs others, then sitting down
with her later and asking, "What do you think we can do to solve this
problem?" will likely be more effective than bribes or threats. It
also helps a child learn how to solve problems and teaches that her
ideas and feelings are important. Of course, this process takes time
and talent, care and courage. Tossing off a "Good job!" when the
child acts in the way we deem appropriate takes none of those things,
which helps to explain why "doing to" strategies are a lot more
popular than "working with" strategies.

And what can we say when kids just do something impressive? Consider
three possible responses:

* Say nothing. Some people insist a helpful act must be "reinforced"
because, secretly or unconsciously, they believe it was a fluke. If
children are basically evil, then they have to be given an artificial
reason for being nice (namely, to get a verbal reward). But if that
cynicism is unfounded – and a lot of research suggests that it is
–
then praise may not be necessary.

* Say what you saw. A simple, evaluation-free statement ("You put
your shoes on by yourself" or even just "You did it") tells your
child that you noticed. It also lets her take pride in what she did.
In other cases, a more elaborate description may make sense. If your
child draws a picture, you might provide feedback – not judgment
–
about what you noticed: "This mountain is huge!" "Boy, you sure used
a lot of purple today!"

If a child does something caring or generous, you might gently draw
his attention to the effect of his action on the other person: "Look
at Abigail's face! She seems pretty happy now that you gave her
some
of your snack." This is completely different from praise, where the
emphasis is on how you feel about her sharing.

* Talk less, ask more. Even better than descriptions are questions.
Why tell him what part of his drawing impressed you when you can ask
him what he likes best about it? Asking "What was the hardest part to
draw?" or "How did you figure out how to make the feet the right
size?" is likely to nourish his interest in drawing. Saying "Good
job!", as we've seen, may have exactly the opposite effect.

This doesn't mean that all compliments, all thank-you's, all
expressions of delight are harmful. We need to consider our motives
for what we say (a genuine expression of enthusiasm is better than a
desire to manipulate the child's future behavior) as well as the
actual effects of doing so. Are our reactions helping the child to
feel a sense of control over her life -- or to constantly look to us
for approval? Are they helping her to become more excited about what
she's doing in its own right – or turning it into something
she just
wants to get through in order to receive a pat on the head?

It's not a matter of memorizing a new script, but of keeping in
mind
our long-term goals for our children and watching for the effects of
what we say. The bad news is that the use of positive reinforcement
really isn't so positive. The good news is that you don't
have to
evaluate in order to encourage.

_________________________________________________

Copyright © 2001 by Alfie Kohn. This article may be downloaded,
reproduced, and distributed without permission as long as each copy
includes this notice along with citation information (i.e., name of
the periodical in which it originally appeared, date of publication,
and author's name). Permission must be obtained in order to reprint
this article in a published work or in order to offer it for sale in
any form. Please contact permissions@....

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