Ultimately, motivation for any venture needs to feel like it comes from inside. When it does, it feels “true”; when it comes from outside, it feels “phony.” Working primarily to please others and to gain their approval takes time and energy away from children’s real job of figuring out their authentic talents, skills, and interests. [Madeline Levine, The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure And Material Advantage Are Creating A Generation Of Disconnected And Unhappy Kids, HarperCollins, 2006, p. 11]

The key to whether people are living autonomously is whether they feel, deep within themselves, that their actions are their own choice. It is a psychological state of feeling free, and it is in the eye of the behaver, so to speak. But it requires that people take an honest look. It is quite possible for people to report feeling free, and even to “sort of” believe it, while deluding themselves. …

[S]urely it is true that we can all feel within ourselves, at least intuitively, if we are autonomous. We can know (if it interests us to know) when our actions are self-initiated or self-endorsed; we can know when we are interested, engaged, and alive. …

And just as surely, we know when we are being controlled. … When people are either complying with or defying controls, they are not being autonomous, and they can know that. [Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation, Penguin, 1996, p. 87]

Of course, it is possible to get people to do something. That is what rewards, punishments, and other instruments of control are all about. But the desire to do something, much less to do it well, simply cannot be imposed; in this sense, it is a mistake to talk about motivating other people. All we can do is set up certain conditions that will maximize the probability of their developing an interest in what they are doing and remove the conditions that function as constraints. [Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes, Houghton Mifflin, 1993, p. 181]

[K]now that your job isn’t to motivate your kids at all. Rather, you want to help them foster their own sense of internal motivation. The end goal is not to get them to do well. It’s for them to want to do well. …

You could offer incentives … or make threats … [b]ut over the long run, carrots and sticks do not develop the kind of self-drive that leads to long-term success. …

“Intrinsic motivation” is just a fancy way of saying behavior that’s driven by curiosity, interest, the pursuit of challenge, or the desire to develop skills. It’s the opposite of behavior inspired by rewards like grades or by the desire to avoid punishment. …

Intrinsically motivated students study harder, pay more attention in class, ask more questions, get better grades, and are more likely to accomplish their goals. … The challenge is that most schools rely on extrinsic motivation, which is why so many parents were tearing their hair our during COVID-19—especially when grades were taken out of the picture, as happened in many schools. [William Stixrud and Ned Johnson, What Do You Say?: How to Talk with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home, Viking / Penguin Random House, 2021, pp. 96-97]

Robert Henri, perhaps the greatest American art teacher of the twentieth century, once captured the essence of being intrinsically motivated when he wrote: “The object of painting a picture is not to make a picture—however unreasonable this may sound. The picture, if a picture results, is a by-product and may be useful, valuable, interesting as a sign of what has passed. The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a high state of functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence.” [Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation, Penguin, 1996, p. 21]

[Edward Deci and Richard Ryan] invite us to reconsider the casual way that we talk about the concept of motivation, as if it were a single thing that one possesses in a certain quantity. We want students to have more, so we try to “motivate” them—perhaps with the strategic use of rewards and punishments.

In fact, though, there are different types of motivation, and the type matters more than the amount. Intrinsic motivation consists of wanting to do something for its own sake—to read, for example, because it’s exciting to lose oneself in a story. Extrinsic motivation exists when the task isn’t really the point; one might read in order to get a prize or someone’s approval. Not only are these two kinds of motivation different—they tend to be inversely related. Scores of studies have shown that the more you reward people for doing something, the more they’re apt to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward. [Alfie Kohn, Feel-Bad Education: And Other Contrarian Essays on Children and Schooling, Beacon, 2011, pp. 181-182]

Our sense of ourselves as basically competent and worthwhile, of being able to have an impact on the events that shape our lives—in short, our mental health—is in jeopardy when extrinsic motivation displaces intrinsic. [Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes, Houghton Mifflin, 1993, p. 95]

[E]xtrinsic rewards reduce intrinsic motivation. …

“Intrinsic motivation is the prototypical form of self-determination,” while “rewards in general appear to have a controlling significance to some extent and thus in general run the risk of undermining intrinsic motivation.” [Deci and Ryan, 1990; Ryan et al., 1983] …

“As rewards continue to co-opt intrinsic motivation and preclude intrinsic satisfaction, the extrinsic needs … become stronger in themselves. Thus, people develop stronger extrinsic needs as substitutes for more basic, unsatisfied needs. … They end up behaving as if they were addicted to extrinsic rewards.” [Deci, 1978] [Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes, Houghton Mifflin, 1993, pp. 71, 79, 83]

The more we try to measure, control, and pressure learning from without, the more we obstruct the tendencies of students to be actively involved and to participate in their own education. Not only does this result in a failure of students to absorb the cognitive agenda imparted by educators, but it also creates deleterious consequences for the affective agendas of schools [that is, how students feel about learning]. … Externally imposed evaluations, goals, rewards, and pressures seem to create a style of teaching and learning that is antithetical to quality learning outcomes in school, that is, learning characterized by durability, depth, and integration. [Ryan and Stiller, “The social contexts of internalization: Parent and teacher influences on autonomy, motivation and leaming,” 1991] quoted by [Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes, Houghton Mifflin, 1993, p. 150]

[N]o growth to freedom occurs except by intrinsic motivation. [Paul Goodman, Compulsory Mis-education and The Community of Scholars, Vintage / Random House, 1964, pp. 61-62]

[E]ncouraging intrinsic learning goals requires that students have considerable freedom—freedom to set their own leaning objectives within reasonable limits and then to decide how best to achieve them. Such freedom requires the monitoring of one’s own progress toward these goals, and the ability to plan. … [Students] must also be trained in the skills of intellectual self-discipline that form the essential complement to freedom. …

[T]he ability to plan is a part of motivation. Indeed, … we will consider the possibility that motives are actually just plans by a different name. This suggests that teaching students to be more planful will actually enhance their willingness to learn, and for the right reasons. [Martin Covington, The Will to Learn: A Guide for Motivating Young People, Cambridge UP, 1998, pp. 20-21, 42]

[S]ometimes tangible rewards are needed to keep students involved long enough, especially in the early stages of learning, for the process of self-improvement to take on satisfying properties of its own. But extrinsic rewards should be used sparingly and withdrawn as soon as skills are adequately mastered. … [T]eachers should rely on extrinsic rewards only as absolutely necessary, and no more: the less powerful the extrinsic controls employed by teachers, the more likely students will be to internalize what they learn and apply it spontaneously without being prompted to do so. [Martin Covington, The Will to Learn: A Guide for Motivating Young People, Cambridge UP, 1998, p. 146]

[Social psychologist Mark Lepper’s principle called “minimal sufficiency”] states that the most effective methods of permanently improving a child’s behavior are those that are applied with just enough coercion or reward to engage the child in the new behavior but not so much coercion or reward that the child finds this to be the most memorable part of the experience. In other words, the external incentives that the adult provides must be minimally sufficient to change the child’s behavior without being more salient in themselves than the standards that the adult is trying to promote. [William Damon, Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in Our Homes and Schools, Free Press Paperbacks / Simon & Schuster, 1995, pp. 178, 183]

Simply put, children cannot learn wholly on their own: for intellectual growth, they need to be instructed, prodded, challenged, corrected, and assisted by people who are trying to teach them something. … [L]earning is more than a matter of realizing one’s incipient inner intimations. It requires an external structure of reality, of information, of communication, and of social supports. Above all, it requires an organized presentation of a systematic body of knowledge. …

The motivation to learn cannot come solely from within. It is built on an amalgamated foundation of inner and outer inducements—including a teacher’s expectations, support, encouragement, and grades. In recent years, the phrase “intrinsic motivation” has attained almost biblical status. … Educators everywhere believe that school materials must intrinsically motivate children if children are to benefit from them. Once again, however, the facts are not that simple. Extrinsic motivation—goading children through rewards, pressure, and other incentives—also has its place in real-world learning. School programs that rely on students’ intrinsic motivation alone cannot teach students to work through the inevitable frustrations and drudgery that eventually accompanies any pursuit. In short, such an approach cannot teach children the work habits that they need for sustained accomplishment and true mastery. [William Damon, Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in Our Homes and Schools, Free Press Paperbacks / Simon & Schuster, 1995, pp. 105-106]

[A]ll the work that [Richard] Ryan and I have done indicates that self-motivation, rather than external motivation, is at the heart of creativity, responsibility, healthy behavior, and lasting change. External cunning or pressure (and their internalized counterparts) can sometimes bring about compliance, but with compliance come various negative consequences, including the urge to defy. Because neither compliance nor defiance exemplifies autonomy and authenticity, we have continuously had to confront an extremely important—seemingly paradoxical—question: How can people in one-up positions, such as health-care providers or teachers, motivate others, such as their patients or students, who are in one-down positions, if the most powerful motivation, leading to the most responsible behavior, must come from within—if it must be internal to the self of the people in the one-down positions?

In fact, the answer to this important question can be provided only when the question is reformulated. The proper question is not, “how can people motivate others?” but rather, “how can people create the conditions within which others will motivate themselves?” [Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation, Penguin, 1996, pp. 9-10]

As socializing agents—parents, teachers, and managers—it is our job to encourage others to do many things they might find boring but that allow them to become effective members of society. Actually, our job goes beyond just encouraging them to do the activities; it’s more challenging than that. The real job involves facilitating their doing the activities of their own volition, at their own initiative, so they will go on doing the activities freely in the future when we are no longer there to prompt them. [Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation, Penguin, 1996, p. 92-94]

The truth is that there are no techniques that will motivate people or make them autonomous. Motivation must come from within, not from techniques. It comes from their deciding they are ready to take responsibility for managing themselves.

When people are really ready to change for their own personal reasons, and when they are willing to face and cope with the myriad feelings—anxiety, inadequacy, rage, terror, or loneliness—that underlie their maladaptive behaviors, they will have the motivation for change. Once that has happened, various techniques may be useful for them, but without a true resolve, without reasons for change that are personally important, techniques will not help. When people put stock in techniques as something that will change them, they are expressing an external locus of causality rather than an internal one; they are holding the misguided belief that being controlled rather than autonomous is the means for bringing about meaningful, personal change. [Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation, Penguin, 1996, p. 194]

How quickly we contribute to students learning that the most important part of schooling is not the development of Life-Enriching skills and information, but earning positive judgments and avoiding negative ones.

Such learning is critical to maintaining Domination systems in which work is done to gain rewards and avoid punishments. Rewards and punishments are not necessary when people see how their efforts are contributing to their own well-being and the well-being of others. [Marshal Rosenberg, Life-Enriching Education: Nonviolent Communication Helps Schools Improve Performance, Reduce Conflict, and Enhance Relationships, Puddle Dancer, 2003, pp. 13-14]

In order for objectives to be established mutually, it is necessary for teachers to clearly communicate how the lives of students will be enriched by pursuing the objectives they choose. This is critical, because Life-Enriching Education requires that actions of teachers and students be motivated by the intention to enrich life and not by fear of punishment or hope for an extrinsic reward (a high grade or a college scholarship, for example), and certainly not simply by some edict that implies that people in authority know what is good for us. …

The process of the teachers and students mutually establishing objectives might begin with the teacher recommending an area of study and explaining the needs that the teacher predicts would be fulfilled by pursuing this area of study. If the student sees the value of the proposed course of study and agrees, mutual objectives have been reached. [Marshal Rosenberg, Life-Enriching Education: Nonviolent Communication Helps Schools Improve Performance, Reduce Conflict, and Enhance Relationships, Puddle Dancer, 2003, pp. 68-69]

Many teachers feel helpless when told not to motivate students using punishment, reward, guilt, or shame, or a sense of obligation to duty. What’s left, they ask? What is left are connections between people and a desire to contribute to one’s own self-fulfillment and the well-being of others. … We share what is valuable to us, why we would encourage others to consider it, and listen to their feelings and needs in return. [Marshal Rosenberg, Life-Enriching Education: Nonviolent Communication Helps Schools Improve Performance, Reduce Conflict, and Enhance Relationships, Puddle Dancer, 2003, pp. 112-113]

[Robert] White’s theorizing suggests that there is a second important psychological need—beyond autonomy—that underlies intrinsically motivated behavior. People, impelled by the need to feel competent, might engage in various activities simply to expand their own sense of accomplishment. When you think about it, the curiosity of children—their intrinsic motivation to learn—might, to a large extent, be attributed to their need to feel effective or competent in dealing with their world. [Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation, Penguin, 1996, p. 65]

Above all, schools must address the Why question with students about all that they do. Why do people study academic subjects? Why is it important to read and write? … Why are you, and your fellow students, here at all?

Every part of the curriculum should be taught with the Why question squarely in the foreground. [William Damon, The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life, Free Press, 2008, pp. 172-173]

In essence, motivation consists of pointing to the concretes in reality that the child will be dealing with and showing him how he can deal with them better if he learns what you are teaching. That is the only way you can anchor a whole subject from the outset. You make every subject part of the skill of dealing with reality, as against “I just learned this stuff because someone told me to.” Learning the latter way is a guarantee of having the subject float in the child’s mind, however well it is taught, and however many eloquent examples the teacher gives, because the whole subject, if unmotivated, is disconnected from his life in reality. …

The principle of motivation is this: show them that the skills they themselves want to have or might want to have depend on mastering this subject. The “might want” is critical. There are many things they do not necessarily want now but they might want some day. …

I want to stress that motivation is not simply something you provide at the first class or the opening discussion. It must be continuous. You have to persistently refer back to your motivation throughout the entire subject matter. [Leonard Peikoff, Teaching Johnny to Think: A Philosophy of Education Based on the Principles of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, edited by Marlene Trollope, Ayn Rand Institute, 2014, pp. 17, 20]

You do not teach values by abstract lecturing, but by proper concretes. And the first step in teaching the proper values is by the kind of motivation you endorse and rely on. To motivate a class is to specify values that you are going to achieve. You actually encourage certain values in students by the kinds of motivation you offer. [Leonard Peikoff, Teaching Johnny to Think: A Philosophy of Education Based on the Principles of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, edited by Marlene Trollope, Ayn Rand Institute, 2014, p. 18]

[T]here are several gods our students are presently asked to serve. …

[T]he first narrative … may properly go by the name of the god of Economic Utility. … If you will pay attention in school, and do your homework, and score well on tests, and behave yourself, you will be rewarded with a well-paying job when you are done. …

The story tells us that we are first and foremost economic creatures, and that our sense of worth and purpose is to be found in our capacity to secure material benefits. …

[T]he god of Economic Utility is coupled with another god, one with a smiling face and one that provides an answer to the question, If I get a good job, then what?

I refer here to the god of Consumership, whose basic moral axiom is expressed in the slogan “Whoever dies with the most toys, wins”—that is to say, goodness inheres in those who buy things; evil in those who do not. [Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School, Vintage, 1995, pp. 27-35]

To almost everyone, … education is a means to an end. For students, that end is a good job. Students want the credentials that will help them get ahead. They want the certificate that will give them access to Wall Street, or entrance into law or medical or business school. And how can we blame them? America values power and money, big players with big bucks. When we raise our children, we tell them in multiple ways that what we want most for them is success—material success. [Mark Edmundson, Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education, Bloomsbury USA, 2013, pp. 53-54]

Too often … the schools, through reliance upon the spur of competition and the bestowing of special honors and prizes, only build up and strengthen the disposition that makes an individual when he leaves school employ his special talents and superior skill to outwit his fellows without respect for the welfare of others. [John Dewey, “The Need for a Philosophy of Education,” 1934, John Dewey on Education: Selected Writings, edited by Reginald D. Archambault, 1964, Chicago UP, 1974, p. 11]

The question is not, Does or doesn’t public schooling create a public? The question is, What kind of public does it create? A conglomerate of self-indulgent consumers? Angry, soulless, directionless masses? Indifferent, confused citizens? Or a public imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance? The answer to this question has nothing whatever to do with computers, with testing, with teacher accountability, with class size, and with the other details of managing schools. The right answer depends on two things, and two things alone: the existence of shared narratives and the capacity of such narratives to provide an inspired reason for schooling. [Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School, Vintage, 1995, p. 18)]