Stories of Picture

Dear Friend,

Today I was reminded by friend about something that I might have lost recently. It's about being obsessed by something in doing your hobby and miss the most interesting part of doing it, having fun from it! This encouraged me to write a letter about Reward & Punishment method in our educational system.

Many of us (including me) is easily tempted and dragged away from our first objective by a simple thing. Somehow I think it's related to how the educational system works. One of the most common methods in education is Reward & Punishment. A child is simply given a reward for doing something that we see is right or correct and a punishment when he does something bad or wrong. While this method perhaps is one of the easiest to use, it has a side effect. We are getting used with pursuing the reward instead of doing something because we really love to. The side effect doesn't stop just there. Recently, I realized a more dangerous side effect of this Reward & Punishment method.

It is what I call 'afraid of doing something'. Let me explain about this a little bit more. There's nothing wrong with parents who ground their boys or girls when they do something wrong. It's just the way parents show their love to their children. In some cultures, sometimes the parents also get angry with the children. The famous sentence for this is, "I told you before... Don't do that again!" What parents don't realize is how these words will be remembered in their children's minds for the rest of their lifes.

If we as parents use these words often enough, then there's a possibility that our children will be afraid of doing something when they grow up. They are afraid of making mistakes. They don't want to try something new. And they don't have the courage to explore their own skills and abilities. They are so afraid of being rebuked by their parents or someone else. Another friend of mine once confessed to me that he didn't have the courage to tell his parents that he had been sick. It's not because he's afraid to be a burden to his parents, but he's afraid his parents would get angry with him and punish him!

While the reward system somehow makes us greedier and biased from the real objective (I believe we all learn from current financial crisis), the punishment part also does a significant damage to our mind by limiting it to something that doesn't really exist.

So my friend, I think we need to learn a lot more about educating our children and ourselves than using a Reward & Punishment method only. Let's begin to see beyond the reward to enjoy what we're really doing and see even further beyond the horizon that we're only limiting ourselves by punishment. I sincerely wish we have wisdom, for this is not something easy to do.


With love,

Your new friend