What I found interesting is that in the past decade or so, the focus on raising children has shifted from discouragement to encouragement. I remember being put on time out, smacked upside the head, given cold showers, grounded, so on and so forth for misbehaving, the latter two being for more severe misdeeds. Nowadays, those types of disciplines or punishments are seen as too harsh, and people instead focus mainly on positive reinforcement for doing well instead. My assumption that all positive reinforcement would have a positive effect on a child’s psychological growth was challenged, as when I had taken Sociology, Anthropology, and Psychology in high school, my teacher said that physical discipline was not good for a child’s development and constantly mentioned pedagogy, to which I made the wrong assumption that any way you can be positive and encouraging is great for a teaching environment. What surprised me is that too much praise can cause a child to lose interest in their passion, because they end up only following what was their passion for the praise. I had thought praising a child for following their passion would allow the child to take pride in their passion and encourage them to follow it more, but looking back on it now, it makes a lot of sense to me that saying “good job” can kill one’s passion at an early age. What frustrates me is that it will take a long time for the article’s message to actually be spread, meaning that even though we are seeing the effect too much praise has now, we will have a few generations of people starved for praise before we begin to realize that saying “good job” is doing more harming than helping. What I would like to say to the author is: Thanks for making me realize that praise can be very harmful to a child’s development. If I am going to be a music teacher, I have to know what is right and wrong when it comes to giving students feedback, or else I can end up skewing a child’s education and have them be less prepared for the future.

 

Kohn, A. (2019, August 14). Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job!" (**). Retrieved from https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/five-reasons-stop-saying-good-job/