SS#140: Rewards & Motivation
How to motivate our children is a perennial issue for homeschool moms, so it’s a regular topic here on Scholé Sisters!
Previously, we’ve had these conversations about rewards and motivation:
This time our “guest” is a book – Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink. In this book, Pink talks about the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, and when each kind is needed.
Listen to the podcast:
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Motivation in your homeschool
Today’s Hosts and Source
Brandy Vencel
motivated her kids with “selfish” deadlines.
Mystie Winckler
motivated her sons with tea if they were timely.
Abby Wahl
motivated her kids with money – the smart way.
Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us
Children who are praised for “being smart” often believe that every encounter is a test of whether they really are. So to avoid looking dumb, they resist new challenges and choose the easiest path. By contrast, kids who understand that effort and hard work lead to mastery and growth are more willing to take on new, difficult tasks.
Daniel Pink, Drive
Scholé Everyday: What We’re Reading
Lies Young Women Believe: And the Truth that Sets Them Free
You have been lied to! Have you been deceived? Through a nationwide survey and in-depth discussion groups, Nancy and Dannah have listened carefully to the heart of your generation. And here are some things they’ve heard:
“I know God should be the only thing that satisfies, but if it could be Him and my friends, then I could be happy.”
"It seems like I have been struggling with depression forever. I always feel like I am not good enough.”
“I tell myself that I don’t really listen to the song lyrics, but once I hear a song a few times and start thinking about what they’re saying I realize that it's too late. It's already stuck in my head."
"For me, the whole wife and mom thing is overrated. It isn’t cool to want a husband and a family.”
Maybe you can identify. Trying to listen to the right voices can be difficult. This book has been written by friends who will help you find the Truth. Maybe your heart is telling you that some things in your life are way off course. Certain habits and relationships have left you confused and lonely. This is not the way it’s supposed to be.
In this book, Nancy and Dannah expose 25 of the lies most commonly believed by your generation. They share real-life accounts from some of the young women they interviewed, along with honest stories about how they’ve overcome lies they themselves believed . They get down in the trenches of the battle with you. Best of all, they’ll show you how to be set free by the Truth.
More info →
Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire
While the term acedia may be unfamiliar, the vice, usually translated as sloth, is all too common. Sloth is not mere laziness, however, but a disgust with reality, a loathing of our call to be friends with God, and a spiteful hatred of place and life itself. As described by Josef Pieper, the slothful person does not “want to be as God wants him to be, and that ultimately means he does not wish to be what he really, fundamentally is.” Sloth is a hellish despair.
Our own culture is deeply infected, choosing a destructive freedom rather than the good work for which God created us. Acedia and Its Discontents resists despair, calling us to reconfigure our imaginations and practices in deep love of the life and work given by God. By feasting, keeping sabbath, and working well, we learn to see the world as enchanting, beautiful, and good—just as God sees it.
More info → 
Taliesin
A magnificent epic of cataclysmic upheaval and heroic love in a breathless age of mythic wonders
It was a time of legend, when the last shadows of the mighty Roman conqueror faded from the captured Isle of Britain. While, across a vast sea, bloody war shattered a peace that had flourished for two thousand years in the doomed kingdom of Atlantis.
From the award-winning author of THE DRAGON KING TRILOGY comes a majestic tale of breathtaking scope and haunting beauty. It is the remarkable adventure of Charis—the courageous princess from Atlantis who escapes the terrible devastation of her land—and of the fabled seer and druid prince Taliesin, singer at the dawn of the age. A story of an incomparable love that joins two astonishing worlds amid the fires of chaos, and spawns the miracles of Merlin . . . and Arthur the king!
TALIESIN:
“Reminiscent of C. S. Lewis . . . Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
Lies Young Women Believe, Nancy Wolgemuth & Dannah Gresh
Abby is using this book to lead a girls-only Sunday School class at church.
Acedia and Its Discontents, R.J. Snell
Mystie is being convicted of the deadly sin of Sloth by this book.
Taliesin, Stephen Lawhead
Brandy is recovering from moving across country with this novel.
Two kinds of motivation
There are two kinds of motivation, and not all motivation are created equal.
Extrinsic motivation refers to reasons to motivate that come from outside the person, added on to the situation that’s not natural. Most reward systems are extrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation means the desire to move springs from inside, due to desire, attraction, and purpose. Intrinsic motivation does not see effort as always one side of a transaction which requires compensation.
It’s the gold standard of motivation. It’s what we should be tapping into.
We can’t ever be guaranteed to trigger intrinsic motivations in other people, which is why we often fall back on adding extrinsic rewards.
Rewards are not always manipulative
Rewards set up in order to control people’s behavior will be manipulative. Even when we are attempting to manipulate our kids to do good and right things,
Sometimes we say we’re trying to motivate, but we’re really trying to manipulate.
To motivate someone is to help them start up their own engine to move forward, not simply push them around.
Manipulation is not moving someone, it’s pushing them around with your own locomotion, which means they don’t develop their own momentum.
The first gut-check thing we can do is to ask if we’re trying to get our kids to dance the part of the dance I’ve lined out for them.
Rewards and punishments are not always wrong. We know this because God rewards and punishes. We have been created to imitate our father in how we parent our children, too. So what is the proper place for rewards? Stay tuned – Mystie and Abby both have examples later in the episode.
The end of Economic Man
All education (and parenting!) presupposes an anthropology. Do you know yours?
“Economic Man” refers to the understanding that people evolved from biologically driven behavior to transactional behavior. The assumption is that all people are motivated by self-interest.
Under the premise of Economic Man, everyone is always motivated only (or at least primarily) for what the self gets out of it – everything is a transaction.
It’s turns out, man is more than a calculating being. Their assumptions can’t account for real life.
The predictions made under Economic Man have not worked, yet much business structure and government policy are based on the presumption that each person is only looking out for number 1.
There is no room for nobility or dignity in this modern, Darwinian anthropology. We probably have more of this view hidden in our assumptions about people and the world than we realize.
The Bible teaches us that people can be motivated by love.
Christian anthropology requires internal motivation
If we believe education is self-education, then we also need to believe that there is internal motivation.
If we aren’t filling a bucket, we have to be lighting internal motivation, not applying external pressure and influential control.
We give our children a conducive place to be molded in by their God. We are not the potter. Although we have authority, we do not control others – nor are we supposed to.
“When the reward is the activity itself–deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one’s best–there are no shortcuts.”
Daniel Pink, Drive
Utilitarianism is still getting in Pink’s way to fully developing what he calls “Motivation 3.0”
The atmosphere required for motivation
Your best approach is to have already established the conditions of a genuinely motivating environment. The baseline rewards must be sufficient. That is, the team’s basic compensation must be adequate and fair — particularly compared with people doing similar work for similar organizations. Your nonprofit must be a congenial place to work. And the people on your team must have autonomy, they must have ample opportunity to pursue mastery, and their daily duties must relate to a larger purpose. If these elements are in place, the best strategy is to provide a sense of urgency and significance — and then get out of the talent’s way.
Daniel Pink, Drive
For intrinsic rewards to develop, we have to create an atmosphere where
- They are warm, fed, clean, healthy, and loved
- Each person has free time and the ability to use that time well
- Each person has room for appropriate free choice rather than micromanaging
- Fellowship is integral, and congeniality is the working tone
- Everyone is in harmony with a larger purpose
Getting out of the talent’s way is akin to Charlotte Mason’s masterly inactivity.
Our children should have a creative capacity to fulfill a given mission, not just a duty to check all the boxes we’ve designed for them.
Do you see your children as your talent or as a cog in your machine or an employee in your business?
Make a choice; bear the consequences
If they do the right thing only because mom told them always what to do and they always obeyed, they remain dependent on mom to be told what to do – they will not then be able to make good choices when they are on their own.
Without any skill in making independent choices and bearing the consequences, they will likely look to someone else to make their choices or simply flounder.
Although we cannot force education onto or into our children, as responsible moms, we can give our children the option of being bored or educated.
To do this, we must remove demotivating and addicting behaviors off the table so they can only choose between the two options.
It helps if what we offer them is only true education, not busy work and dumb activities that get in the way of having productive personal free time.
A craft a child chooses and accomplishes is better for him than a craft mom developed to tie into the history studies, even if the quality and relevance of the craft is less. Its overall value to the child’s development will be greater.
Two version of Autonomy
Autonomy can mean self-controlled, self-governing persons with agency. The kind of autonomous person Pink is talking about is still a productive member of a team.
Sometimes autonomy can be used to refer to someone who is living as an individual atom, self-referential, and disconnected.
The autonomous team member isn’t deciding whether or not he’s going to do the work, but how he is going to go about accomplishing the work.
“Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity.”
Daniel Pink, Drive
Mentioned in the Episode
Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy of Education (Book 6 of the Home Education Series)
This edition of Charlotte Mason’s Home Education Series is presented complete and unabridged, retaining the pagination of the original to make research and referencing easy. All the books have been fully transcribed and formatted using a clean and easy-to-read font so that there’s no excuse not to read these revolutionary works. Written shortly before her death, A Philosophy of Education represents Charlotte Mason’s final thoughts after a lifetime spent thinking on education. Containing the final version of the 20 principles on which her method is based this book is a great place to start for parents of older children.
More info → Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.
Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose-and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.
More info → 
The Convivial Homeschool: Gospel Encouragement for Keeping Your Sanity While Living and Learning Alongside Your Kids
Homeschool days can be long and hard. It's easy to lose sight of what's actually happening in the midst of the day to day. Even when we lose our vision, God does not lose His. While we attempt to teach and disciple our children, we find that it is ourselves needing the instruction and discipleship. We also find that God provides both, using our decision to homeschool to draw us closer to Himself. To continue with love and perseverance, we need confidence not in our work but in God’s. These thirty readings will lift up your eyes and spirit so you can focus on what truly matters while doing the daily work of educating your kids.
More info → 
The End of Economic Man
In The End of Economic Man, long recognized as a cornerstone work, Peter F. Drucker explains and interprets fascism and Nazism as fundamental revolutions. In some ways, this book anticipated by more than a decade the existentialism that came to dominate the European political mood in the postwar period. Drucker provides a special addition to the massive literature on existentialism and alienation since World War II. The End of Economic Man is a social and political effort to explain the subjective consequences of the social upheavals caused by warfare.
Drucker concentrates on one specific historical event: the breakdown of the social and political structure of Europe which culminated in the rise of Nazi totalitarianism to mastery over Europe. He explains the tragedy of Europe as the loss of political faith, resulting from the political alienation of the European masses. The End of Economic Man is a book of great social import. It shows not only what might have helped the older generation avert the catastrophe of Nazism, but also how today's generation can prevent another such catastrophe. This work will be of special interest to political scientists, intellectual historians, and sociologists.
The book was singled out for praise on both sides of the Atlantic, and is considered by the author to be his most prescient effort in social theory.
More info → 
A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix
An invitation and guide for leaders “to cast a courageous and imaginative vision, to lead resiliently, and to be present and steady in times of deep anxiety.”
Ed Friedman’s genius was to see the individual in the family in the larger group, bringing the wisdom of his experience as a therapist and rabbi to the field of organizational leadership.
A timeless bestseller, A Failure of Nerve still astonishes in this new edition with its relevance and continues to transform the lives of leaders everywhere―business, church, family, schools―as it has for more than 20 years:
- Offers prescient guide to leadership in the age of “quick fix.”
- Provides ways to recognize and address organizational dysfunction.
- Emphasizes “strength over pathology” in these anxious times.
“The age that is upon us requires differentiated leadership that is willing to rise above the anxiety of the masses. We need leaders who will have the ‘capacity to understand and deal effectively’ with the hive mind that is us. This is, in Friedman's words, ‘the key to the kingdom.’ I am grateful for this accessible new edition.”
―C. Andrew Doyle, Bishop, Episcopal Diocese of Texas
The Golden Key for Life and Leaders: The Idea of Office
Unlocking the Secret. Society is adrift, without a rudder. The people are perishing because they lack the vision for life and leadership. Whether in the government, education, on the job, at home and, especially, in the church . . . something has been lost, hasn’t it? But there is hope! It's the right idea of office. The true idea that actually works in the real world for those who are moved to take a firm step of true faith.A pastor-scholar, Dr. Sietsma’s concise and inspiring instruction is not only based in Scripture, it is also tried and tested in the praxis of life’s challenges and hardships. Yes, society has a mess on its hands. So, what the author offers is even more relevant for us in the 21st century. There is a way forward—for those who hold the key. Minister - Martyr “Kees” Sietsma first studied in Kampen, and then went on to earn his doctorate at the Free University of Amsterdam. He and his wife had five children. Then it happened. On the Monday following that sermon on Sunday for his flock in Amsterdam, he was arrested for his faith. He died at the age of 46 in the Dachau concentration camp. Includes foreword by David T. Koyzis, Ph.D. REVIEWS"The Golden Key for Life and Leaders provides erudite guidance to those following a specific ministry calling, or pursuing an academic analysis of Biblical office as a concept. It further succeeds at encouraging individual self-examination of one’s performance in the role of Believer. Sietsma’s brave leadership and obedience to God in his own office are to be recognized and celebrated. Even now, humanity seeks effective crisis leadership as history seems to repeat itself. The Theology of Leadership Journal acknowledges that the traditional church has interpreted God's commission as a call to followership. Kornelis Sietsma, pastor and scholar, wrote his treatise on The Idea of Office at a time that called for greater structure and clarity of expectation for both leaders and followers. In benevolent but unequivocal terms, Sietsma insisted that followers (“Believers”) had an obligation to take ownership for making a clear declaration of faith and living by that declaration, joining with and the local church and adhering to its norms and mores as long as they were Scripturally sound. He taught that leaders in the church must provide full-throated guidance and shepherding for their people, which would in turn influence the people to make wise decisions in their business, social, and political endeavors. Those church leaders should maintain a respectful distance from the other spheres of leadership, focusing on serving God and then on serving man. The relevance and utility of The Golden Key for Life and Leaders in contemporary church leadership development center on its clear message of structure and accountability, duty and responsibility, with grace as the foundation." Angela Spraner, Ph.D Theology of Leadership Journal (Fall 2020)
More info → Lies Young Women Believe: And the Truth that Sets Them Free
You have been lied to! Have you been deceived? Through a nationwide survey and in-depth discussion groups, Nancy and Dannah have listened carefully to the heart of your generation. And here are some things they’ve heard:
“I know God should be the only thing that satisfies, but if it could be Him and my friends, then I could be happy.”
"It seems like I have been struggling with depression forever. I always feel like I am not good enough.”
“I tell myself that I don’t really listen to the song lyrics, but once I hear a song a few times and start thinking about what they’re saying I realize that it's too late. It's already stuck in my head."
"For me, the whole wife and mom thing is overrated. It isn’t cool to want a husband and a family.”
Maybe you can identify. Trying to listen to the right voices can be difficult. This book has been written by friends who will help you find the Truth. Maybe your heart is telling you that some things in your life are way off course. Certain habits and relationships have left you confused and lonely. This is not the way it’s supposed to be.
In this book, Nancy and Dannah expose 25 of the lies most commonly believed by your generation. They share real-life accounts from some of the young women they interviewed, along with honest stories about how they’ve overcome lies they themselves believed . They get down in the trenches of the battle with you. Best of all, they’ll show you how to be set free by the Truth.
More info → Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire
While the term acedia may be unfamiliar, the vice, usually translated as sloth, is all too common. Sloth is not mere laziness, however, but a disgust with reality, a loathing of our call to be friends with God, and a spiteful hatred of place and life itself. As described by Josef Pieper, the slothful person does not “want to be as God wants him to be, and that ultimately means he does not wish to be what he really, fundamentally is.” Sloth is a hellish despair.
Our own culture is deeply infected, choosing a destructive freedom rather than the good work for which God created us. Acedia and Its Discontents resists despair, calling us to reconfigure our imaginations and practices in deep love of the life and work given by God. By feasting, keeping sabbath, and working well, we learn to see the world as enchanting, beautiful, and good—just as God sees it.
More info → Taliesin
A magnificent epic of cataclysmic upheaval and heroic love in a breathless age of mythic wonders
It was a time of legend, when the last shadows of the mighty Roman conqueror faded from the captured Isle of Britain. While, across a vast sea, bloody war shattered a peace that had flourished for two thousand years in the doomed kingdom of Atlantis.
From the award-winning author of THE DRAGON KING TRILOGY comes a majestic tale of breathtaking scope and haunting beauty. It is the remarkable adventure of Charis—the courageous princess from Atlantis who escapes the terrible devastation of her land—and of the fabled seer and druid prince Taliesin, singer at the dawn of the age. A story of an incomparable love that joins two astonishing worlds amid the fires of chaos, and spawns the miracles of Merlin . . . and Arthur the king!
TALIESIN:
“Reminiscent of C. S. Lewis . . . Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
Listen to related episodes:
SS #119 – Rewards Revisited
SS #109 – Aristotle v. Behaviorists
SS #67: Death by Sticker Chart (with Karen Glass!)
