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In her Exchange article, “Not in Praise of Praise,” Kathleen Grey shares her experience with using praise in the classroom…

“In my own teaching, both with children and adults, I don't use praise words very much any more. They often sound manipulative and insincere, even when I use them judiciously. And there are times when I don't like receiving praise for exactly the same reason.

“The conviction that we should not risk putting anything of ourselves out into the world — through writing, teaching, singing, or simply just being — unless we know for sure that it will meet with approval is a devaluing, self-defeating state of mind. Yet it is a product of the old discipline of criticism which often imprisoned creative energy and perverted personality. It is no wonder that we have turned to praise to mend our ways as we search for more effective means of teaching and rearing our children humanely.

“To many of us, praise seems like such a good, positive way to get children to behave. It's a way to make them feel good about themselves so they'll try harder to do what they should. We congratulate ourselves that we have abandoned the use of criticism in exchange for teaching with praise. What we fail to see is that praise is simply the positive face of criticism, that both presume the right of one person to impose judgment on another.”

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