Alfie Kohn wrote the book Punished by Rewards, a book about how rewards negatively impact the students that they are given to. By introducing a reward for "good behavior" - whatever that behavior might be - those students very quickly stop doing the positive behavior without being given the reinforcing reward.

The positive behavior stops once the rewards stop. There is no incentive to do good.

The implication is that rewards, while positive in the short term, ultimately rob the students of the ability to demonstrate those positive behaviors for the inherent "right" reasons.

Across time, those students develop a lifestyle around expecting rewards for everything, and will even stop their own personal growth if a sufficient external reward is not received.

202009231926: The scary part is that I believe we've worked ourselves into a corner with our rewards based school system and the amount of rewards focused games (the gamified world).

Source: (Punished by Rewards #citation)

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