Extrinsic Motivation

Since our talk in class about extrinsic motivation I have really paid attention to how extrinsic motivation is used in our society in everyday life. Here is one of my encounters with extrinsic motivation.

I work at my church in the nursery with 1 to 2 year old. When the children get dropped off in the morning before the service they have a bit of trouble when their parents need to leave. Now granted I only watch them for about an hour if that. Since it is a new environment I can understand children having this problem. Well this little boy about 2 came in with his mother, and he did not want her to leave. He started crying and crying and  he would not stop. We tried to get him to play with blocks or a puzzle he would not do anything. Finally his mother pulled out a candy. She said to him that he needed to be a good boy and he would receive the treat. In a matter of seconds the little boy stopped crying, and started interacting with the other children. She gave me the candy and said I could give it to him when the time was right. I put the candy in my pocket.

Unfortunately the extrinsic motivation does not stop there. As the little boy was playing he tripped over a chair and started to cry again. I told him everything was alright but he kept crying. I remembered that I had the candy in my pocket so I pulled it out and told him that he needed to be a good boy like mommy said and he could get the candy. He stopped crying and went about playing again. When his mother came to pick him up I gave him the candy and he was happy to finally have it.

With all of our talking in class I felt bad really promoting the extrinsic motivation. I felt like if we had tried hard enough we could have gotten the little boy to stop crying. Now he will learn that when he cries he can just get more candy, and that is not a positive way to learn. How at 2 years old though do you get a child to agree with what you want when they will not listen? I wish I had dealt with the problem better. Extrinsic motivation although effective is damaging to a child's way of learning. We should encourage more intrinsic motivation and help a child help themselves instead of always taking the easy way out. If we try this we can make the world a more intrinsic motivated place.

Rodriguez- Aria (Extented Comment)

Richard Rodrigues

Aria

               When I was reading this article this week I was really hoping to see what some people wrote about it. I decided I would do an extended comment on it and really analyze and see it from another person’s point of view. I decided to do it on Raquel’s blog. Her blog really spoke to me and I knew I could kind of expand on what she had written. I like how she connected it to herself and her speaking Portuguese growing up. It seemed as though her and Rodrigues went through the same thing. She goes on to explain how she did. I really like the how she said it was hard to learn a language that you haven’t been speaking your whole life. This can be connected to kids having to learn a foreign language in high school. I know it was so difficult for me to learn Spanish in high school. It was a hard thing to grasp a whole different kind of culture, so I can only imagine the struggle adults must go though from other countries, when English is everywhere in America. Luckily I only had to speak Spanish in class these people have to deal with English everyday and not really understanding it. It is like Raquel’s mother. At 16 it is very hard to pick up a new language. So for the parents in “Aria” you can see why the dad just kind of stopped talking in public or around his English fluent children.

                I am not sure I am so cool on children having English be a child’s first language. It is easier for a child to pick up a “public language,” as Rodrigues calls it than that of the home language. They need that connection with their parents as a small child and if they are speaking English then that communication is taken away. Children need that tie to their family roots. It is also said that children who are bilingual that helps boost brain power. This shows that children who learn English and their native language are more likely to succeed.

                I like what this article discusses. I also like the connection Raquel made to it in her own life. My friend speaks Russian and she told me that when she came over here from America she did not talk in school for almost two months. How was she supposed to learn English though if her parents had no idea how to speak it? She could not lose that tie with her family and just start learning English right off the bat. 

My question for class is should parents then learn a language before moving to a country to better educate their child?

McIntosh- Knapsack (Argument)

Peggy McIntosh

White Privilege- Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

(Argument)

First off I would like to state how much I enjoyed reading this article. It was an easy article to understand, for the most part and I feel she was very relatable with what she was saying. In this article Peggy McIntosh is arguing in the beginning that white males have all the power in the world, and then goes on to state how white people in general have the power when it comes to anything. She then list what it is like to be a white person, and how we can go about our daily lives not being judged on our color, but anyone who is not white will be questioned and harassed for anything they do just because of the color of their skin. She then goes on to state how we take these things for granted because it is part of the way our society was made. She also looks at the fact that whiteness is not the only thing that sets people apart. There are the other advantages that give people an advantage. Some of these include: Age, ethnic, physical ability, nationality, religion, or sexual orientation. In her own words I feel her argument is best stated in this quotation, “As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage”. This quote sums up her whole article. It I feel also puts a positive spin on the article which may have been why I was so pleased with this article. It says how no one is really in a disadvantage, but we are all equal, it is those, a.k.a the white people, who are at an advantage because they know the rules of society. It does not help as well that the rules of society of those of the white people world. When Peggy McIntosh is stating the way in which person of non white color could be affected in our society, here is a link to how a person who is white but homosexual can get the same kind of treatment

http://www.bibble.org/gay/stories/phobia/lesbian_cantbe_college_pres.html . This link just further supports McIntosh in saying that if one is not at an advantage in society then they will be mistreated. It is like she said about the knapsack; “White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.” This knapsack can apply to anything where someone has an advantage over someone else because of an unchangeable thing. This is what I hope to bring up in the class discussion. That is that I agree with McIntosh when she talks about the knapsack, but this knapsack is only worn by the members of S.C.W.A.A.M.P. They have the advantage over everyone. I feel it is a good point to address.

About Me

Hi, I'm Christopher and I am a sophomore at Rhode Island College. I am hoping to become an English teacher at the high school or middle school level. I enjoy singing and doing theatre. I am in Godspell right now with the East Bay Players. I have been in about 20 shows, and hope to continue theatre and share it with my students in the classroom someday. I have always wanted to be a teacher since I can rememeber. It seems like such a great career path, and I want to give back for all the help and things teachers have done for me in the past. I love meeting new people, and making friends. I worked for orientation this summer and I also work in the Oasis office Monday-Thursday. I enjoy watching T.V. when I have the time. I like multiple reality television shows, but my favorite show of all time has to be Glee. I hope this will be a great semester in FNED and I hope to learn a lot.

-Christopher Margadonna