Transforming Learning | The Learning Code Institute
“Genes Change Slowly, Your Brain Changes Quickly”
Science is finding unsettling evidence that the “carrot-and-stick” approach to learning, called authoritarianism, which dominates virtually every corporate and educational institution in the world, may be a major inhibitor of the very learning, behavioral change, and innovation these institutions are trying to create. Science has shown the gigantic chasm between what the research reveals and what organizations do.
Although this information is profound and has been well-known in the research community for many years, it doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact upon how institutions treat people or how we treat one another. In this article we identify the depth the damage we do to ourselves and others by not understanding the scientific basis of what really motivates us.
Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, demonstrated that, except in factory pieceworkers, reward and punishment don’t do what we think they do—and often make things worse. Unfortunately, even though his book became a bestseller, it triggered little change in our collective understanding of motivation. It is our hope that an overview of the scientific approach outlined here will transform how educators, trainers and homeschool parents view reward-and-punishment-based learning systems. This knowledge applied to your life, and the lives of those you have an influence upon, will open a whole new world of opportunities to you.
Extrinsic Motivators Versus Intrinsic Motivators
In their misguided efforts to direct your learning, increase your creativity, and influence your behaviors, traditional authoritarian institutions rely on three major components of extrinsic motivation:
Research now points not to external motivation but to internal motivation as the very best method of creating the neurological change needed for profound learning and behavioral development. When we look at motivation from this more scientific perspective, we question most of what we thought was “right” about how we motivate ourselves and others. We also begin to understand why our children and most organizational cultures are so stressful and inefficient.
The reason for this is that while external motivation gets you to move in a direction that is meaningful to others, internal motivation compels you to do things that are meaningful to you. This isn’t a subtle difference. It is the stimulation of your Meaning Network, which we examine in detail in our book Cracking the Learning Code that is responsible for creating internally directed motivation.
Conversely, evidence shows that when you’re prompted to perform acts with little meaning to you by overly authoritarian institutions, the ability to self- stimulate and enhance those same brain structures and neurotransmitter systems decreases.
External motivators that are heaped upon you by outside sources can also increase your stress hormone levels with dire consequences for brain function, ranging from withering your neural connections and killing neurons, to creating neural tangles, to promoting impulsive behaviors.
Also, external motivators have been linked to boredom, burnout, and the weakening of the bond between mentor and student/boss. The most damaging effect, however, may be external motivators’ ability to breed out your very ability to access personal meaning in your own life. Research is even showing that this inability to access your intrinsic motivation may be the basis of the widespread psychological condition called codependency.
The “Motivation Problem” Is a Myth
One of the biggest problems in getting students and employees to learn and behave in specific ways is called the “motivation problem.” When people fail, we cry, “They’re unmotivated,” but, in fact, everyone is motivated in some way. The problem is that we aren’t always motivated to move in the direction that authority wants us to move in.
Internal motivation springs from personal meaning, whether it’s designing a rocket, composing a sonata, writing a computer program, getting a tattoo, goofing off at work, skipping school, or getting pregnant at fourteen. Simply put, the “motivation problem” is a myth. We are all motivated—by our existing neurological structures laid down by our genes and previous experiences—to select new information and behave in ways that match those pre-existing neural networks.
The “motivation problem” takes hold when your internal values propel you to select information and move in directions contrary to what an authority deems as appropriate. Our educational institutions usually see students who join gangs, take drugs, get piercings, skip school, or get pregnant as unmotivated. The truth is these young people are highly motivated. Such rebellious activities all take a substantial amount of effort, energy, and internal motivation. In the same way, corporations see workers who goof off as unmotivated. Yet unproductive employees have to be energized to expend the effort necessary to escape projects, pretend to be working, and hide from the boss. When we say employees and students aren’t motivated, we’re really saying that they aren’t behaving like standardized machines. They are not motivated to do what authority wants them to do in the way authority wants them to do it!
Carl Rogers identified the essence of learning based upon intrinsic motivation. It was not the lifeless, sterile, futile, quickly forgotten stuff that has crammed into the mind of the poor helpless individual tied into his seat by ironclad bonds of conformity! We’re talking about LEARNING—the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb everything he can see or hear or read about gasoline engines to improve the efficiency and speed of his ‘cruiser.’ It’s about the student who says, “I am discovering drawing in from the outside, and making that which is drawn a real part of me.” The end result of our heavy reliance on extrinsic motivation over intrinsic motivation creates a climate where there is “little evidence of student motivation to learn in the typical classroom.”
The “Motivation Problem” Is a Myth
One of the biggest problems in getting students and employees to learn and behave in specific ways is called the “motivation problem.” When people fail, we cry, “They’re unmotivated,” but, in fact, everyone is motivated in some way. The problem is that we aren’t always motivated to move in the direction that authority wants us to move in.
Intrinsic Motivation Brings an Added Benefit: Reduced Behavioral Problems
Institutions that rely on what’s meaningful to the individual instead of reward and punishment brings an added benefit—a neurological climate that produces a reduction in behavioral problems. Neither kids nor adults want to fool around, cause trouble, or waste time when they believe the information presented will help them more successfully survive and thrive in their personal world. The more an individual’s personal Meaning Network is stimulated by the environment they’re in, the longer that individual will stay focused on the joy and discovery of learning, which in turn limits their desire to act out. Why act out when you’re getting what you want?
When you’re engaged in meaningful activities, your stress levels decrease, and there’s a resulting upshift in your neural energy to the upper and frontal parts of your brain. When these structures are engaged, emotional control goes up, and impulsivity goes down. As an example, in high school, there would likely be few male behavior problems in a class titled “How to Impress Girls” and few female behavior problems in a class titled “How to Attract and Keep the Man of Your Dreams.” While we may never see classes like this in school, our institutions for children and adults must recognize that unless the information that they want people to learn is personally meaningful, learners and employees will either act out or want out.
Intrinsic Motivation Brings an Added Benefit: Reduced Behavioral Problems
Institutions that rely on what’s meaningful to the individual instead of reward and punishment brings an added benefit—a neurological climate that produces a reduction in behavioral problems. Neither kids nor adults want to fool around, cause trouble, or waste time when they believe the information presented will help them more successfully survive and thrive in their personal world. The more an individual’s personal Meaning Network is stimulated by the environment they’re in, the longer that individual will stay focused on the joy and discovery of learning, which in turn limits their desire to act out. Why act out when you’re getting what you want?
Extrinsic Motivators Steal Your Authenticity
Have you ever felt that you can’t be who you really are and still impress others or succeed in life? You aren’t alone—many of us feel the same way. Have you ever wondered where the feelings that tell you that you can’t be your authentic self actually come from?
For most of us, these feelings start in first grade. Think about it: before first grade, what were you doing most of the time? You were running around, stimulating those 3,000 trillion neural connections in your young brain by doing what was most meaningful to you. Life was a joy and marvel to behold. Whether you were banging on pots and pans, eating dirt, chasing your friends, daydreaming, squirting water out of your mouth, gazing at flowers, or playing with dolls or LEGO, you were self-directing all your discovery and learning.
In general, you were free to fill your “meaning bucket” with what charmed you at that moment. In fact, intrinsic motivation was so important to you that if someone tried to redirect your actions away from what was meaningful to you, your biology could prompt you to throw a giant hissy fit.
Then, everything changed!
You went into first grade (or started kindergarten) and were jerked into a whole new world. What did you have to do to survive and thrive? You had to adapt your behaviors to fit the world of the classroom. How did you do that? You had to give up doing what was most meaningful and joyful to you and replace it with what was most meaningful to the teacher and the system. What was meaningful to the teacher and the system? Not eating dirt, not gazing at flowers, not chasing your friends, not spitting water out of your mouth, not daydreaming, not playing with dolls or building forts. Instead, it was sitting quietly at your desk, doing your homework, memorizing things that in general held no meaning for you, taking tests, and getting good grades.
In general, you were free to fill your “meaning bucket” with what charmed you at that moment. In fact, intrinsic motivation was so important to you that if someone tried to redirect your actions away from what was meaningful to you, your biology could prompt you to throw a giant hissy fit.
You quickly got the message: To survive and thrive in the classroom, what was personally meaningful to you didn’t matter. You needed to conform to what was meaningful to others or get punished. Consequently, your stress levels increased as your vision narrowed, while you tried to figure out strategies to get your homework done as quickly as possible while passing tests with the least effort possible, all while anticipating the weekend when you could once again get back to doing things you loved.
As you progressed through the grades, your stress levels grew higher as your motivation become more and estranged from your interests. If you chose the college track, you had to engage in extracurricular activities and join clubs not necessarily because you wanted to but because you needed to get acceptance from the authority that would admit you into college. Little by little, you became less and less authentic as you molded your behaviors to get acceptance from the system.
The end result for many of us? After spending twelve to sixteen years being controlled by extrinsic motivators, we adapted our brain structures so that we lost our true selves – our authenticity, something most of us are still trying to reclaim. The good news is that our brains are highly malleable in adulthood; therefore, we have a tremendous capacity to learn a new way of adapting to our world and to regain the authenticity we lost. If you choose to read Cracking the Learning Code: The Science That is Changing How the World Learns you’ll discover much more about how make the shift to transform yours and your children’s learning capacity.
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