0:15

Pushkin. I

0:18

want you to think back to your school days for a second.

0:21

What was the worst grade you ever got? How

0:24

did it make you feel? And

0:27

now think about the best grade. How

0:30

is that grades?

0:33

Even decades after graduation, we

0:35

can still remember what those marks felt

0:37

like. And it makes sense

0:39

that grades affect us so deeply because

0:42

they're important. I mean, they're

0:44

kind of synonymous with education, aren't

0:47

they. Well, it turns

0:50

out not really. In

0:52

fact, grades are a relatively new

0:54

invention. For almost seven

0:56

centuries, schools got by without

0:58

them. As a professor myself,

1:01

I find that incomprehensible. I

1:03

mean, generation after generation

1:05

of scholars completed their studies without

1:08

anything akin to a grade point average. How

1:10

could my predecessors tell students apart?

1:13

How did they sort pupils who worked really, really

1:15

hard from those who just phoned it in?

1:18

Back in seventeen eighty five, all

1:20

that changed, so

1:22

we had the stuff that Karen found for us

1:24

today. I recently went on a pilgrimage

1:27

to a special spot at Yale where I teach, the

1:29

Binnick Library, in order to see an

1:31

important document, one that's kept

1:33

alongside a copy of the Declaration of

1:35

Independence and one of the oldest

1:37

pieces of literature in the world. I wash

1:40

my hands, but I can just open it. It's like not

1:42

going to break it. I was able to hold the

1:44

Diary of Ezra Styles, seventh

1:47

President of Yale University. So

1:49

cool. So the important

1:52

part is right here. On April

1:54

fifth, seventeen eighty five, he

1:56

recorded the details of an exam he'd conducted

1:59

that spring Tuesday with fifty eight

2:01

of his students. My colleague Mike

2:03

Morand pointed me to a short but revolutionary

2:06

footnote twenty opt to me second

2:10

Optimy twelve

2:12

inferiories Bonnie ten

2:16

and the unlikely event that you're someone who doesn't speak

2:18

Latin, let me translate for you. Styles

2:21

was splitting his students up into four different

2:24

grades from Optimy best

2:26

to pajoras worse. With

2:28

this tiny footnote, just a few lines.

2:31

It's argued that Styles invented

2:33

the four point o grading system we still

2:35

use today. I mean, this is amazing. It's

2:37

like a single line, his handwritten

2:39

text and the biggest thing in education

2:42

that shaped our history. It's right there in my

2:44

hand. I got to hold the first

2:47

ever grades. Nowadays,

2:51

we don't just have GPAs, we have

2:53

SATs and gres in advanced

2:55

placement tests and everything in between.

2:58

It's estimated that the average American

3:00

child takes more than one hundred standardized

3:03

tests. But we don't just grade

3:05

in education. We think ratings

3:07

are a good incentive for all our behavior years,

3:09

and that means we're constantly being evaluated,

3:12

from the number of stars and our uber driver rating,

3:15

to our positivity percentages on eBay

3:17

to a performance review on the job. We

3:19

seem to love being measured, and

3:22

when we get good grades, it feels great.

3:24

All those a pluses, the gold stars,

3:27

those little smartphone vibrations when we hit

3:29

our goal. They encourage us to become

3:31

better, more virtuous people. Or

3:34

do they are chasing? These incentives

3:36

really as good for our happiness as we think.

3:46

Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be

3:48

happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What

3:51

if our minds are lying to us, leading

3:53

us away from what will really make us happy.

3:56

The good news is that understanding the science

3:58

of the mind can point us all back in the right

4:00

direction. You're listening to the

4:03

Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos.

4:10

The first time I eboxed it, I felt kind

4:13

of like a dweeb. This is Emma Lord,

4:15

she writes for Bustle dot com. Back

4:17

in twenty fourteen, she broke her foot.

4:20

I couldn't run for a little while while I was

4:22

waiting for a fracture to heal. And that's kind of

4:24

how the whole thing started was

4:26

I was pretty much told not to run for like six weeks,

4:29

and to me, that kind of seemed like a nightmare.

4:31

Emma was worried she wouldn't be able to stay in shape

4:33

while she was injured, so her mom bought her

4:35

a new step tracking device, a Fitbit, hoping

4:38

it would make her feel better and keep moving while

4:40

she healed. But I, you know, the first

4:42

day I used it, it did that thing

4:44

where it buzzed when I got to ten thousand steps,

4:46

and I was like, ooh, like this is such a

4:48

nice feeling. I just

4:51

got instant validation from it, and then

4:53

I was just kind of hooked. Emma quickly

4:55

experienced what science shows happens when

4:58

we start grading our performance with incentives

5:00

like a fitbit buzz we humans

5:02

are like little lab rats when it comes to external

5:05

rewards. Those buzzes and good

5:07

grades and gold stars work really

5:09

well. They change our behavior quickly,

5:12

but often more quickly than we expect.

5:14

I guess after that first day, the

5:17

baseline goal was to always hit the ten

5:19

thousand steps, and then you know, it started

5:21

getting to the threshold where you're like, oh, if I

5:23

can do ten thousand, I could do fifteen. And

5:26

that was when Emma started seeing the problem.

5:29

External rewards like the buzz of a fitbit

5:31

are so powerful that they often

5:33

work a little too well. I

5:35

think the first moment

5:38

I felt myself

5:40

becoming a little bit addicted to it was and I

5:42

realized I was suddenly getting on the metro

5:44

two hours before work just so I could

5:46

get in the ten thousand steps before work,

5:49

because I just wanted that validation, like really

5:52

early in the day. So it was going to be like off my conscience,

5:54

which is like such a weird thing to think about, because

5:56

like nobody was gonna the police weren't going to come

5:59

for me if I didn't hit ten thousand steps

6:01

that day. But I just felt better after

6:03

it had buzzed. The scary thing

6:05

was at the fitbit wasn't just affecting Emma's

6:07

happiness. It also started affecting

6:10

Emma's relationships. When I got

6:12

a new job once and there was a fitbit

6:15

like leaderboard to see who had the best

6:17

steps, and some guy in the office had

6:19

like thirty thousand, and I went out that weekend

6:21

and crushed it. And I came

6:23

in the next day and I was like, I got thirty five

6:25

thousand, and like nobody was pleased with me, and

6:27

I was like, not the way to make friends.

6:31

The level of competition emma experience with

6:33

her fitbit was reminiscent of another

6:35

time in her life when she felt super competitive

6:38

back in school. I came from one of the

6:40

most competitive school districts in the country, so

6:42

it was like one of those things where everybody was like the hungry

6:45

he was in there. So I definitely do

6:47

think that this is related to that in

6:49

some ways. I definitely was

6:52

one of those kids who was very, very manic about

6:54

my grades. In twenty fifteen,

6:56

Emma shared her experiences in an article

6:58

on Bustle entitled nineteen very

7:01

real emotional struggles of having a Fitbit

7:03

or does your Fitbit have you? I

7:06

thought it would be relatable to other people

7:08

who are kind of going through the motions

7:10

on that too, and weirdly I got more response from

7:12

that article than maybe anything I've

7:15

written on this entire site, because

7:17

you know, it is such a relatable kind of

7:19

mania, especially because

7:21

you know, I think people are so confused about

7:23

where that compulsion is coming from that

7:26

it's almost a relief to be like, oh,

7:28

I'm not the only crazy one. But

7:30

despite her own experiences with fitbit

7:33

and the response to her piece years

7:35

later, Emma's still tracking.

7:37

You know, even after the foot injury

7:39

healed. I found myself still

7:42

counting, even when I was running, and that

7:44

was like something I'd never really felt the need to count

7:46

before, just to have that number

7:48

there and to like know exactly how many steps I

7:50

had in a day. I mean, it's been four years

7:52

and I'm still doing it. Emma's

7:57

experience shows that seemingly innocuous

7:59

benchmarks can quickly change our behavior

8:01

for the worse. But they're more insidious

8:04

than we realize. Every

8:06

external reward has the power to turn

8:08

love into hate and virtue into

8:11

vice. They can even

8:13

relentlessly play on our most primal

8:15

fears. The

8:19

happiness lab will be right back. Where

8:30

do you stand on Obamacare? It's one

8:32

of the most bitterly divisive issues in US

8:34

politics today. I bet you have

8:36

a pretty strong opinion about it. So what do

8:38

you think it would take to shift that opinion

8:41

significantly? Would you believe

8:43

me if I said I could manipulate your view

8:45

with some arbitrary incentive, like

8:48

giving you a fake grade. Let

8:50

me explain. Back in nineteen sixty

8:53

one, Robert Bostrom and his colleagues surveyed

8:55

more than two hundred students on a couple

8:57

hot button issues. They asked

8:59

whether America should legalize gambling and

9:02

if the nation should adopt socialized medicine.

9:04

A few weeks later, all the participants

9:07

were assigned to write essays about these issues.

9:09

But, and this is crucial, they were

9:11

asked to defend the very view they

9:13

had staunchly opposed. People who viewed

9:15

gambling as an evil had to write in support

9:18

of casino owners. Those who saw

9:20

socialized medicine as creeping communism

9:22

were told to act as its cheerleaders. The

9:25

scientists collected the essays, but didn't

9:28

even bother reading them. Bosterm

9:30

and colleagues knew that the simple act of writing

9:32

about the opposite view was likely to

9:34

soften everyone's opinions, changing their

9:36

minds slightly. But what effect would smacking

9:38

an arbitrary grade on those essays have? The

9:41

next day, the researchers handed them back

9:44

randomly, giving a third of them an A,

9:46

a third of them a D, and a third

9:48

no grade at all. After seeing

9:50

their marks, students took the original

9:52

survey again. So what happened.

9:55

Students who got no grade or a bad

9:57

grade A D changed their minds

9:59

a bit, But something much more incredible

10:01

happened to the group that got inn A. Remember,

10:04

the grades were given totally randomly. The

10:07

A graded essays weren't better or more thoroughly

10:09

researched than the others. Nevertheless,

10:12

students who got that fake A shifted

10:14

their views more significantly than those

10:16

who got a bad grade. The simple

10:18

act of getting that A cause students

10:20

to change their core beliefs, isn't

10:23

that chilling views we hold? Deer

10:25

can be swayed by the simple act of evaluation,

10:28

even if that evaluation is totally

10:31

bogus. Let's

10:33

play a little game. It's called Unscrambled

10:35

the Letters. I'm going to give you a series of letters,

10:38

and you need to turn them into an English word.

10:40

Here's an easy one, just three letters,

10:43

ready, k O

10:46

A. Time's

10:48

up? Did you get it? The answer

10:51

is oak. Here's

10:54

a harder one, five letters, ready

10:57

c L P A

11:00

E, Time's

11:03

up the answer place.

11:07

And now an even harder one. It's

11:09

got nine letters ready O

11:12

n V O t

11:15

U I l E.

11:19

Time's up the answer evolution.

11:23

Think about how much you enjoyed playing this game. Unless

11:26

you're a huge puzzle fiend, the last one

11:28

with nine letters might have been a bit taxing. The

11:31

first one with three letters probably wasn't

11:33

that great either. It was a little too easy

11:35

to be fun. I bet the one in the

11:38

middle was just right. When

11:40

playing a game like this, we prefer puzzles

11:42

that are hard but doable. Those

11:44

are the ones we tend to enjoy the most. The

11:47

same holds for little kids. Back

11:49

in the seventies, child psychologists Susan

11:51

Harder tested sixth graders on Anna

11:53

Gramps just like this. She

11:55

gave them super easy ones with just three letters,

11:58

and ones with six letters that were pretty tough

12:00

for children their age. What did she find?

12:03

Overall, the kids were happiest when

12:05

pushing the boundaries of their abilities. They

12:08

even smiled almost twice as much

12:10

when doing the harder puzzles. But

12:13

what happens when you throw grades into the mix

12:16

To test that Harder told a different group of

12:18

sixth graders that the puzzles were part of a

12:20

school exercise and that they would be graded

12:23

on their performance. The result,

12:26

it's actually heartbreaking. Here's

12:28

how Harder described it. Children

12:30

working for grades chose significantly

12:32

easier anagrams to perform. Not

12:35

only did subjects respond below their

12:37

optimal level, but they manifested

12:39

less pleasure and verbalized more

12:41

anxiety.

12:44

When working for grades. The kids did

12:47

worse, felt worse, and aimed

12:49

lower. Grades can take experiences

12:51

that our minds normally find really enjoyable

12:54

and turn them into a source of dread. My

12:57

earliest memory of this was actually

12:59

when I was in seventh grade. This is Tracy

13:01

George. She spent her whole career advising

13:04

students suffering from severe academic

13:06

stress. She's seen firsthand

13:08

how grad can become a dangerous obsession,

13:11

how they robbed students of joy and even

13:13

worse. I was going to a private

13:15

middle school outside of Cleveland, Ohio, where I'm

13:17

from, and one day

13:20

a girl I know was crying at her locker.

13:22

Right It was in the middle of class. She kind of snuck out.

13:24

I'd left to go to the bathroom and she was there alone

13:27

crying, and I asked her what was going on, and

13:30

she said she had gotten her first to be and

13:32

she was so worried she would not be able to get into the school

13:35

she wanted to go to, and she had already picked

13:37

whatever IVY league she wanted to go to at that time,

13:39

at eleven or twelve. And

13:41

it was really hard to see that that she

13:44

was so distraught and so worried about

13:46

and really terrified. I mean she was crying and

13:48

almost like shaking about what this

13:50

would mean for her future. And it was the first

13:52

time I realized I really wanted to help people

13:55

and students, growing adults learn

13:57

what is important to them today. Tracy

14:00

is the founding director of the Good Life Center at Yale

14:02

University. Tracy and I teamed

14:04

up to develop this new resource on campus

14:06

in order to improve student well being. Note

14:09

the irony here. The very college

14:11

where GPAs were invented now employs

14:14

Tracy as well as a host of other staff

14:16

members to deal with the fallout of

14:18

that two hundred year old system At

14:20

Yale. There's a long, long wait list to see

14:22

a mental health counselor here, and that's

14:25

really one of the purposes of the Good Life Centers to create

14:27

a space for this overflow of

14:29

where does students go when they need to learn how to

14:31

manage this daily fear or the daily

14:34

stress, the daily anxiety. And this

14:36

isn't just an Ivy League problem or a

14:38

Yale problem. This is the thing that colleges are seeing

14:40

nationwide right right, absolutely, this

14:42

is an American thing. This is our country

14:45

and how we are approaching education, and

14:47

it's really detrimental and is breaking students

14:50

down. It's one thing to feel a little

14:52

stressed about getting your first b or

14:54

to get a bit neurotic about missing your fitbit

14:56

buzz, but that's not what we're talking

14:58

about. College mental health centers

15:00

aren't just dealing with a few obsessive, stressed

15:03

out students. We are facing a real

15:05

epidemic. In a national

15:07

survey, more than four percent of college

15:09

students reported they're too depressed

15:12

to function. More than half of current

15:14

students say they feel hopeless a

15:16

lot of the time, more than sixty percent

15:18

said they experienced overwhelming anxiety,

15:21

and more than one in ten say they've seriously

15:24

considered suicide in the last year.

15:27

And these are not numbers that we should be seeing in

15:29

this young population. This is when their brains are continuing

15:31

to form, They're starting to figure out who they are,

15:33

what they want to do in the world. This isn't just

15:35

a surface level amount

15:38

of stress or worry. It's really this fear

15:40

based reaction, just like

15:42

I had experienced in seventh grade, This fear

15:45

about what it will mean for your future really

15:47

far down the line. What's most

15:49

disturbing about all this fear and stress isn't

15:52

how it's making students feel. It's

15:54

affecting students physical health,

15:56

the basic way their bodies function.

15:59

And so this constant, low level

16:01

stress has a trickle down effect of physical

16:04

effects like our higher

16:06

blood pressure, higher heart rate, quicker

16:09

breathing, which is the activation

16:11

of our sympathetic nervous system that

16:13

was designed to help us fight off an

16:15

animal or flight run away from an animal

16:18

in a very direct way with our evolution,

16:20

like a tiger is attacking us basics right right,

16:22

there is a tiger in the bush, and we need to respond.

16:25

So our muscles tense as if we're actually getting

16:27

ready to hit something or runaway. Our heart rate

16:29

goes up, our blood pressure goes up in order

16:31

to get the blood to our muscles to activate

16:34

those muscles, and a lot of functions

16:36

decrease that we don't need for immediate

16:38

survival, like we don't need digestion, we don't

16:40

need reproduction, we don't need a lot of major systems

16:43

to survive in the moment. And there's a

16:45

ton of research that shows regular fight

16:47

or flight response causes chronic stress in the body

16:49

and has a trickle down effect of health impacts.

16:52

The problem is we see this system activated,

16:55

and students see these little lines and tigers

16:57

and bears behind every bush in their

17:00

daily modern lives. So it's not

17:02

a line, a tiger, or a bear, it's

17:04

an exam or a transcript or

17:06

an application that's actually causing the same

17:08

reaction. So when you talk to students

17:10

and you ask about their stress responses, especially

17:13

chronic stress responses, they often talk about

17:15

headaches, muscle tension, digestive

17:18

issues, even reproductive or

17:20

sexual issues, and they don't

17:22

realize until they're getting this process,

17:24

this biological process explaining that it's actually

17:26

chronic stress causing this trickle down

17:28

effect of physical issues.

17:31

It's really problematic, especially because

17:34

I see the most that students are wrapping up their

17:36

sense of value and purpose as a human

17:38

in their grades. They're not just being

17:40

graded in their classrooms. They're being graded

17:42

with everything you know, from their Instagram

17:45

likes to their what their fitbit is telling

17:47

them. Absolutely, I've heard some students

17:49

just in the hallways going like, why didn't this picture

17:51

get enough likes? Or why did this like I stopped

17:54

getting likes after so many days

17:56

or whatever. You know, any app

17:58

that is designed to support us in a certain

18:01

activity, like a running app, and

18:03

even meditation apps, right, so even that's

18:05

become even meditation apps

18:08

are competitive now. Yeah, it's totally crazy.

18:10

Actually haven't opened a meditation app in a while because

18:12

of this. I mean, even students who come

18:14

back to my class, the mindfulness

18:16

class that I teach here at Yale, are talking

18:18

about themselves as being quote unquote bad

18:20

meditators. Tracy and I have had

18:23

lots of conversations about what we can

18:25

do to fix things, but we both

18:27

worry it's going to take more than a wellness

18:29

center. It's going to take major structural

18:32

changes to how we and our institutions

18:34

think about external rewards. The

18:37

culture the system has to change as well,

18:39

especially for the school that invented

18:41

this four point grading scale. We invented this process.

18:44

We are in a great position to try to untangle that a

18:46

little bit and to give a new generation

18:49

of students of fighting chance at being

18:51

functional and happy and successful. But

18:54

that kind of change is really hard. We

18:57

might even need to abandon the ways we've educated

18:59

students since the time of Ezra

19:01

Styles. All right, let's get

19:03

started. Welcome

19:05

everybody to Psychology

19:07

and the Good Life today. What we're going

19:10

to go through is just a quick introduction

19:12

to the course. If you've been listening

19:14

to the Happiness Lab for a while, you know I

19:16

teach a class at Yale called Psychology and the Good

19:18

Life, an entire class devoted

19:21

to teaching students how to be happier. Over

19:23

a thousand students enrolled the first time

19:25

I taught it. This gets back to the reason why

19:28

I want to teach this class, which is that I

19:30

actually want to help you. I also

19:32

want you to find ways to overcome the stress, because

19:34

it's not healthy. But even

19:36

an Ivy League class devoted to making students

19:39

happier had to include the

19:41

one thing that I knew would make my students

19:43

the most miserable. These are the things,

19:45

by the way, that you are graded on. If we're going to talk about

19:47

our grades are stupid and you shouldn't worry about

19:49

them, but I have to give you one because y'all, college

19:52

you one let me teach this scourse if I didn't, and I wish I

19:54

didn't have to grade you, but I do. That's

19:56

right. Despite everything I just told

19:58

you, I still had to grade my students,

20:01

and while showing them the research that

20:03

grades don't work the way we think, but I

20:06

still tried to give them a way out. Like ya, college

20:08

one let me teaches clad. It was like, what are they greeted

20:10

on? Like methic because they don't get any grades like and

20:12

they're like, no, you haven't. They get on something. But you

20:14

have a mechanism to thwart this because

20:17

you can't say, aha, provisitudos has to de gree

20:19

me on something. I'm going to take the class Credit

20:21

D. Credit D is the Yale version

20:23

of pass fail. You get a grade, but

20:25

there are no A minuses and B plus,

20:27

just credit or no credit. But

20:30

I still couldn't force students to give up their grades.

20:33

They had to elect to take my class Credit

20:35

D of their own accord. I

20:37

did a lot to try to convince them, why

20:40

do I care? Because everything we're going to learn

20:42

the course suggests that grades are really dune. You

20:44

learn less, you're more anxious, and you're

20:46

less happy because everything this course is supposed

20:48

to play against what I have to provide you a degree.

20:51

So just in the class credit D.

20:53

Like, seriously, I know how many

20:55

students actually took the class credit D. I

20:58

don't know because professors

21:00

at Yale aren't allowed to know. It's

21:02

still considered a stigma for a student

21:04

to choose to take a class without a letter grade,

21:07

so they get to keep it a secret. Two

21:11

hundred years after Yale, President Ezra

21:14

Styles created grades. This is

21:16

how deep his beliefs go. They're so

21:18

entrenched, they're like a religion. I

21:20

was starting to lose faith in this system. But

21:23

to find a path forward, I had

21:25

to talk to one of the few true heretics

21:27

who are willing to raise their voices and

21:30

fight. But if you're asking, should

21:32

we just get rid of grades? Yes,

21:35

I mean grades poison everything they touch.

21:38

The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. Writer

21:48

Alfi Khan has been America's fiercest

21:50

critic of our grading obsession for decades.

21:52

This could be revolutionary. You have to

21:55

change the way you think about parenting because

21:57

how many of you out there have offered bribes

21:59

to get your kids to stop crying.

22:02

His stark warnings about the dangers of external

22:04

rewards got him invited on Oprah twice

22:07

in one year back in the nineties. You

22:09

think kids are being punished by the

22:11

rewards in the long run, right,

22:14

But in the short run it works.

22:16

Alvie's classic book, Punished by Rewards

22:19

was just reprinted to markets twenty

22:21

fifth anniversary, twenty

22:23

five years longer than my college

22:25

students have been alive. Alfie's

22:27

been railing against the creed of ezra styles

22:30

for more than a quarter of a century. Grades

22:32

are problematic because of a larger

22:35

phenomenon of using extrinsic

22:37

inducements doggy biscuits,

22:39

carrots and sticks. Choose your

22:41

metaphor to try to make

22:44

students perform, rather

22:46

than authentically engaging

22:49

students in dealing

22:52

with questions, problems, and projects

22:54

that they find interesting and

22:56

worth their curiosity. And the

22:59

three effects of graves overall are

23:01

one. They undermine student's

23:03

interest in learning. To the

23:06

best of my knowledge, every study

23:08

that has ever paired students with

23:10

and without grades in terms of their

23:12

excitement about the learning has

23:15

found a negative effect from grades. The

23:17

second effect is that grades lead

23:20

students to try to avoid

23:22

challenging tasks. If they

23:24

have an opportunity to

23:27

do that, they will then pick the

23:29

shortest book or the most familiar

23:31

topic for their project. That's not

23:33

because they're lazy, it's not

23:36

because they're snow flakes. It's

23:38

because this system has led

23:40

them to respond rationally to an irrational

23:43

demand. I mean, if the

23:45

point is to get an A, of course, you're

23:47

more likely to do that if you're doing something easier.

23:50

And then we turn around and blame the students for

23:52

not being motivated or when the

23:55

grading system has elicited

23:57

a very predictable response. And

23:59

the third effect of grades is

24:01

that it leads students to think in a shallower

24:03

or more superficial way. They're

24:06

less likely to really press to

24:08

say, how do we know that's true? Or isn't

24:11

that contradictory to what we did

24:13

last week? They're more likely to say, do

24:15

we have to know this? Is this going to be on the

24:17

test? And again, the problem is not with the

24:19

students, it's with the fact of giving

24:21

grades. Research finds

24:24

that when you get rid of things like grades and

24:26

indeed all rewards, kids

24:29

spontaneously pick harder

24:32

things to do. So you

24:34

can't improve the system by

24:36

merely tweaking the way grades are

24:39

done. You've got to get rid of it,

24:41

which a number of schools have done, including

24:43

some colleges and high schools, and even

24:45

more middle schools and elementary schools. When

24:48

I first met Alfie at his home in Massachusetts,

24:50

I took him at present a photocopy

24:53

of the Ezra style's diary entry I saw

24:55

back at Yale, the first grades ever. I

24:58

thought he might get a kick out of seeing it. I didn't

25:00

realize how strong his reaction would be. This

25:02

is like showing me the first paddle that was used

25:05

to hurt a kid. This

25:07

is something I look at frowning. This is

25:09

not something I treat as a as

25:11

a cherished relic. As

25:13

an educator. That's a tough thing to hear. Alphia

25:16

is placing the grades I give my students on a

25:19

spectrum that includes the horrifying practice

25:21

of corporal punishment beating

25:24

my students. That's one thing I've

25:26

learned from studying this topic for thirty years

25:28

is that rewards, like punishments, are

25:31

ultimately about power. If

25:34

I threaten you with a

25:36

punishment, you do this or I'm going to make you

25:38

suffer. It's obvious I'm trying to control

25:40

you. But if I say, if you jump

25:43

through these hoops, here's the goodie

25:45

I'll give you, it should

25:47

be obvious. But it isn't always

25:49

that that's just as much about control

25:52

because it's treatily, you know,

25:54

because it's dipped in sugar syrup.

25:57

We often don't realize this is just

25:59

as much about doing two

26:02

rather than working with Alphie

26:05

argues that we tend to see motivation as a single

26:07

entity, when in reality, there are

26:09

two distinct forces which drive us, one

26:12

intrinsic, the other extrinsic. The

26:15

first is a hero, but the second

26:17

is somewhat of a villain. Intrinsic

26:19

motivation in general just means you get a

26:21

kick out of whatever is you're doing. It

26:23

means you enjoy doing something for its

26:25

own sake, and that can be reading

26:28

a book, solving a problem,

26:31

writing code, painting a picture,

26:33

helping someone who needs to help anything.

26:36

Extrinsic motivation means

26:39

you do something that's for something

26:41

extrinsic to or outside of the task itself,

26:44

such as getting a reward, and that reward

26:46

could be money, a grade, a

26:49

certificate. It could be praise,

26:51

good job that's just a verbal

26:53

doggy biscuit, or fear

26:56

of punishment, which is another kind of extrinsic

26:58

motivation. So the question I mean because you could

27:00

see someone who really wanted to motivate

27:03

kids thinking, well, if they are already interested

27:05

in learning, why don't I add an additional

27:07

reward on top of that. You know, like two

27:09

rewards should be better than one, right, right.

27:12

The problem is that, first

27:14

of all, you can't motivate someone

27:16

other than yourself, and the

27:19

more you try, the more you paradoxically

27:21

undermine the very thing you're trying to promote.

27:24

So, for example, about a half

27:26

dozen studies have found that children

27:29

who are rewarded or praised

27:32

are less generous than their peers.

27:34

When you say, good job,

27:36

I really like how you shared your

27:39

brownie with Diane. You're so generous.

27:41

Good for you. That kid just became

27:43

a little more selfish because you

27:46

taught her that Diane's feelings are irrelevant.

27:49

What matters is what you'll

27:51

get from helping, in this case,

27:53

a patronizing pat on the head. If

27:56

you wanted to destroy a child's interest

27:58

in reading, you should give the kid a prize.

28:00

For reading a book A that's

28:03

manipulative, and people don't like to be manipulated.

28:06

B It intrinsically

28:09

devalues the thing for which you got the

28:11

reward. Now the kid figures while

28:13

reading must suck. If it's something they have to

28:15

bribe me to do, you have reframed

28:18

it in the person's head. That's why

28:20

it's so remarkable to watch little

28:23

kids who have not yet

28:25

been graded and

28:27

rated and ranked and so on, following

28:30

their interests. You're looking at intrinsic

28:33

motivation in its undiluted

28:36

form, where little kids can't

28:38

wait to figure out how to make sense

28:41

of those squiggles on the restaurant menu.

28:44

They want to know, as my daughter asked, are

28:46

their bones in my tummy? They

28:48

keep asking us until we

28:50

give them doggy biscuits for successful

28:53

answering the question, and then they start

28:56

asking a different question, which is do

28:58

we have to know this? And we're continuing

29:00

to treat our children, our students, our

29:03

employees, and sometimes even ourselves

29:05

in effect like lab animals. It's

29:07

not just dehumanieing. The research

29:10

shows it's counterproductive, not

29:13

merely ineffective. The students

29:15

I teach at Yale are far removed from the innocent

29:17

children. Alfie describes, after

29:19

years of a's and b's, they have internalized

29:22

the pursuit of grades as the prime motivation

29:24

for paying attention in class. I

29:26

worry the idea that they should learn because it brings

29:29

them pleasure and stimulation is long

29:31

forgotten. They are way down a path

29:33

leading them away from their own happiness.

29:36

The question is not how much achievement

29:39

do they have under their belts,

29:42

what's happened to their souls? It's

29:44

what's happened to the desire to figure

29:46

stuff out that all human beings start

29:49

with. Many of them are joyless.

29:51

So we're in this situation

29:54

where most educational systems are using

29:56

grades. What's the solution. If you're an

29:58

individual teacher, you do what you can in

30:00

the long run by organizing and

30:02

mobilizing your peers to change

30:04

the structure, rather than treating

30:07

grades as a fact of nature, like the

30:09

weather that's just always going to be with

30:11

us and we have to cope with it.

30:14

Is not it's a political decision. And there are

30:16

plenty of pilot projects and schools showing

30:18

that you not only can do without grades,

30:21

but that students do much better without

30:23

them. As I talked to Alphie. More

30:25

and more, I started to believe it

30:27

is possible to go back to a world without grades,

30:30

to what education was like before Ezra

30:32

Style started this new creed. Alphie

30:35

understands that it's a long road ahead, but

30:37

he believes the revolution is worth it. He

30:40

even thinks are fundamental values goals

30:42

like equality and intrinsic worth depend

30:44

on it. I think your primary goal should be

30:47

to help everyone to succeed. If

30:49

you had to use grades, then you would want

30:51

everyone to get aids. The idea

30:53

that there is a little normal distribution.

30:56

A bell curve sits in the

30:58

head of a lot of instructors, even when they're not

31:00

creating on a curve. Greating on a curve

31:02

is immoral. There's no other word

31:04

for it. To say that, no matter how well

31:06

everyone does, some of you

31:09

cannot get the best grade. Suggest

31:12

that it's a war of all against all.

31:14

The more we tend to see life in

31:17

adversarial terms, where I can

31:19

succeed only if you fail,

31:22

the more all of us are dragged down

31:24

to failure. Even the winners ultimately

31:26

lose. So

31:32

what should you take away from this episode? First,

31:35

the external rewards aren't all They're

31:37

cracked up to be Adding in a grade

31:39

or a fitbit buzz might change your performance

31:42

in the short term, but it'll cost you dearly.

31:46

Pursuing success on those terms

31:48

can rob you of the joy you may experience in your

31:50

studies, hobbies, or even career,

31:53

and that means we need to find ways to return

31:55

to our internal rewards. Run

31:57

because you enjoy the sensation, not

31:59

to beat some arbitrary number on an app, take

32:02

a class to satisfy your intellectual curiosity,

32:05

not to get on the honor roll and

32:08

make a podcast us for the fun of it, not

32:10

to tap the charts. As

32:13

people and as a society, we need

32:15

to find ways to reduce these systems

32:17

of external rewards that we've surrounded ourselves

32:19

with. It's the only way to return

32:21

to our childlike joy of learning just

32:24

for learning sake, just because it's fun,

32:26

just because we dig it. And

32:29

if you want a completely grade free way to learn

32:31

about the other lives of your mind, then

32:33

I really hope you'll come back for the next season

32:35

of The Happiness Lab with me Doctor

32:38

Laurie Santos. The

33:01

Happiness Lab is co written and produced by

33:03

Ryan Dilley. The show is mixed and mastered

33:05

by Evan Viola and edited by Julia

33:08

Barton, checking by Joseph

33:10

Friedman, and our original music

33:12

was composed by Zachary Silver. Special

33:15

thanks to Mia LaBelle, Carly mcgliori,

33:18

Heather Faine, Maggie Taylor, Maya

33:21

Kanig, and Jacob Weisberg. The

33:24

Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries

33:27

and me Doctor Laurie Sanders