Just Say No to Candy and Junk Food Incentives
by Cy
PurityandVerve.com
“Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education" ~Chuang Tzu
Early on in my former role as a public school teacher, I was required to attend a faculty workshop themed, “Candy in the Classroom.” An experienced teaching duo professed the power of candy to us as a fool-proof way to motivate students. Candy, they told us, was the secret to solving all of our classroom management woes. Each time someone participated, the team would throw a piece of candy to them. It reminded me of the circus, notorious for rampant abuse, where the animal is given food for compliance with the trainer’s commands. I knew something wasn’t right at the time, but I was too inundated with the newness of teaching to analyze it further. Now I realize this pair of teacher-leaders were effectively promoting toxic, addictive drugs to incentivize learning. They were treating capable children like subjugated animals, robbing them of their innate love of learning, and replacing it with processed sugar.
I was disturbed to find out that this dynamic dyad wasn’t alone in preaching the junk food gospel. I was teaching summer school and a visiting teacher came to assist with a neighboring class. She was an incredibly kind, gentle and effective educator whom the kids took to immediately. Regretfully, she also incentivized her students with junk, something she didn’t “need” to do. She would haul in bags of snacks, the kinds sold in membership warehouses with great deals on mostly bulk quantities of nothingness. Weekly, she would bring in bags of corn chips, potato chips, and other salty, fried, processed snacks. At the end of each day, her students would receive a “treat” for good behavior. Many of the students at the school experienced high levels of poverty, food insecurity, and were burdened by a slew of physical and mental health challenges including obesity, asthma, diabetes, depression, and suicidal ideation. Additionally, they faced a variety of special education needs from developmental delays to ADD/ADHD. The incredible harm caused by adding junk food to already precarious circumstances can hardly be measured.
I don’t believe these teachers had malicious intentions. They were committed to high-need schools, responding to the desperate need for quality teachers to educate students some deem unteachable, all for a less than generous salary. Oftentimes the pressures to get students to pass benchmark state assessments was extreme, placing a teacher’s job in jeopardy if their students did not perform at a certain level. This is all in the context of a nation with extraordinary resources that insists upon perpetuating gross inequalities through unequal educational opportunities. These teachers were doing what they thought was required in order to motivate their students to learn. While acknowledging these difficulties, as teacher-leaders, they should have engaged in deeper thinking about their practices.
Despite the challenges of teaching, truly a labor of love, dangling addictive, chemical-laden, genetically modified “food” substances in front of children facing hurdles including economic hardship, chronic health conditions and learning disabilities is incredibly problematic. When a teacher does this, they effectively commit child abuse. Promoting junk food atop a pandemic of poor and declining children’s health is not effective teaching practice (1). Education should not harm students. If we cannot teach without causing harm to children, we must reconfigure our practice or choose a different career. “Candy in the classroom” doesn’t only impact children’s present state of health. It also reinforces addictions to low quality foods, while creating an association between unhealthy foodstuffs and learning, setting children up for failure in the future. Worst of all, it imparts upon impressionable children that learning is something that receives tangible and immediate material rewards instead of teaching children (who know intrinsically) that learning is a worthwhile, pleasurable, and phenomenal activity in and of itself (2).
Administrators also have a critical role in influencing the food culture of the schools they lead. I recall, for instance, how I was required by the administration to implement a school-wide behavior modification system in my classroom. I was asked to stop my class periods five minutes early to review students behavior and assign numbers to various subcategories such as whether or not they remain in their seat or class participation. I adamantly refused to dedicate 35+ minutes of daily instructional time to this and got “talked to” a few times but continued the way I saw best. Instead of focusing on a behavior plan that was largely meaningless to my high schoolers, I got to know my students better and designed more engaging lessons to curb distractions that allowed for behavioral mishaps. The administrators would offer incentives like stickers, keychains, snacks and pizza parties to the most well-behaved students. Evidence-based or not, I considered this antithetical to my teaching practice. My principal eventually let the issue go since my classroom had few to no incidents. Again junk foods are promoted from the top down as incentives for good behavior, quite ineffectively, and to the detriment of the entire student body.
Parents engage in similar harmful practices when they reward their children with food for good behavior. Food should not be used as an inducement for children in any context. First, reward foods tend to be less healthful. Further, this practice can promote insecurity in children. Food patterns should be rhythmic and predictable to ensure a child’s needs are being met and to facilitate a healthy relationship with food. I have spoken with numerous people who trace some of their current food addictions and challenges to parental systems of rewards and punishments using food. The conclusion that can be drawn is that these practices must stop (3).
A wonderful alternative to using candy and junk “food” is praise. It means so much more to a child to hear good things about themselves or to see their parents and teachers smile. Educators can compliment the child on things like positive behavior, schoolwork, helping out around the classroom or contributions to a class discussion. Children love heartfelt praise. They literally drink it up and it has a healthful, lasting effect upon their self-concept. For teachers, parents and caregivers who are passionate about food, there are wonderful ways to bring food into the classroom or home that are health-promoting and life-affirming. Have a class food-prep session. Make a salad, smoothie, vegetable soup or fruit salad with your children. Have everyone cut up vegetables and fruits and plate them in interesting ways. Bring an unusual fruit or vegetable to school and have the students try it. You’d be amazed how much children love fruit AND vegetables. The dairy, meat and processed-food promoting mass media is often the source of the idea that children do not like vegetables. While fruits are fairly straightforward and universally loved, vegetables are also delicious. Kids realize this if we allow them the opportunity. Publish a healthy recipe book and organize a potluck. Have an end-of-year fruit feast to celebrate accomplishments and the coming of summer’s bounty. I’m not one who likes to promote tangible rewards, but if you find them absolutely necessary, use things that have nothing to do with taste or smell. Use experiences such as games, books, music, crafts or extra recess.
We are obligated to protect our children and to help them achieve their greatest potential. We owe our children the best of ourselves and the best of our world. They deserve to cultivate a lifelong love of learning within themselves and we can guide them towards this, not by using toxic incentives, but through healthful, loving engagement and care. Leave the candy and junk food behind and come into your role as someone charged with the incredible responsibility of bringing up the next generation with your whole heart. I promise, you and your children will achieve greater success than any candy-wielding pedagogue.
References
(1) Children’s Health Defense. The Sickest Generation: The Facts Behind the Children’s Health Crisis and Why It Needs to End. September 2018
(2) Wen, Tiffanie. The Things that Do – and Don’t – Motivate Kids to Succeed. BBC. December 5, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191203-the-things-that-do-and-dont-motivate-kids-to-succeed
(3) Jacobsen, Maryann. What Rewarding Kids with Food Looks Like 20 Years Later. May 27, 2011. https://maryannjacobsen.com/what-rewarding-kids-with-food-looks-like-20-years-later/