When rewards become more important than learning

Recently, at a community event, a group of teenagers was invited to take part in a learning challenge. They were asked to read, answer questions and collect points. Those who read regularly, answered correctly and completed more of the challenge earned higher scores.

Then came reward day.

Everyone who participated would receive a gift, but the gifts differed greatly in size and value. The highest scorers would receive the biggest and most expensive ones, while those with fewer points would receive smaller gifts. The reasoning seemed simple: those who achieved more should receive more.

But something about it did not sit right with me.

On questioning the system, I was given an explanation many of us would recognise: this is how education works. Students receive grades according to their performance, and those grades eventually influence which universities and opportunities are open to them.

But perhaps that is exactly why we should question it.

Imagine being a teenager walking onto a stage while everyone watches to see the size of your gift. Without anyone saying a word, the gift can become a public announcement of where you stand: high achiever, average achiever, low achiever.

And a score does not always tell us how much effort went into achieving it.

What about the teenager who spent hours reading but got several answers wrong? The one who reads slower than everyone else? The one who may have an undiagnosed learning difficulty? What about someone who completed every question honestly, while another may have used artificial intelligence or asked someone else for help?

Who, then, actually worked harder?

After several conversations, the reward system was changed. Instead of receiving different gifts based on their scores, those who participated were invited to spend a day together at a bowling centre.

Then something unexpected happened.

Teenagers who had hardly participated before suddenly showed up.

Was it because the outing was free? Because it was social? Maybe. We cannot know for certain. But it made me wonder whether those teenagers had ever really been “disengaged” in the first place. Perhaps the way participation had been designed made some feel there was little point in joining.

And this is where a small community experience begins to look remarkably similar to what can happen in education.

Schools need assessment. Students need feedback, and achievement deserves recognition. But we should be careful when grades, prizes and rankings become the main reason to learn. A student can quickly move from asking, “What can I learn from this?” to asking, “How many marks will I get?”

Research on motivation has long raised a similar question: what happens when external rewards begin to overshadow the satisfaction of learning itself?

We also need to ask what happens to those who repeatedly find themselves at the other end of the scale.

Not every capable student shines in an examination. Some are creative thinkers. Some solve practical problems brilliantly. Some communicate well, lead others or notice things that everyone else misses. Yet when success is repeatedly measured mainly through reading, remembering and producing the correct answer at the correct time, some students may begin to believe that they are simply “not good enough.”

Perhaps they are not failing the system. Perhaps the system has become too narrow to see them.

This is not an argument against grades, competition or rewards. Recognition can motivate students and give them a genuine sense of achievement. The question is what happens when the reward becomes more important than the learning itself.

We often worry about teenagers losing interest in education. Perhaps occasionally we should turn the question around.

Instead of asking why some students no longer want to participate, perhaps we should ask: What have we created that made them stop wanting to?

Bernadette Guirguis is Assistant Professor, Zayed University