I must’ve been ten or eleven when my school tutors decided that I was a competent painter. They chose to scribble a hurried ‘A’ against my drawings and display them in the visitor's gallery. I earned several A’s and grabbed plenty of wall space — but only, and only if, I stuck to what I was good at — green meadows and flowers.
For years, I painted green meadows and flowers. Green meadows and flowers. Green meadows and flowers. Eventually, I stopped.
In my twenties, I wondered why I had moved away from art; why picking up a brush and attempting to splash colour generated in me a spurt of anxiety; why what should have been a joyful pursuit now felt loaded with — what exactly? — expectation. Green meadows and flowers. Straight As. A wall.
I was in Paros, Greece when, as a twenty-four-year-old, I opted for studio art. In the ‘school’ I attended, there were no grades. All canvases were up for display.
I painted meadows and flowers — how could I not?; I was in Greece; it was spring — but this time without the fear that if I abandoned the theme, I’d score a B minus, or worse, get cast into youthful anonymity. Some days I painted seas and suns, and on an especially intrepid evening, a self-portrait.
I painted because it was a soul urge. And so, sometimes I painted all night. Sometimes I didn’t.
It must sound strange to most — as it did for the longest time to me — that as a teenager, I drifted away from a pursuit because I was commended for what I did.
But there it was, the truth. Unfathomable, but still the truth.
Till one day, it all made sense. I came across the work of Alfie Kohn, author and lecturer, committed to using science-based evidence to highlight the flaws in mainstream parenting and education. He stated — with Kohn-ian succinctness — ‘rewards punish’.
And they do. And in ways we are bound to miss because, let’s be honest, rewards feel like the opposite of punitive action. They appear warm and accepting — wide open arms; a beloved friend’s embrace.
But are they really?
What if punishments and rewards aren’t at all antithetical? What if both proceed ‘from basically the same psychological model, one that conceives of motivation as nothing more than the manipulation of behavior’ (Kohn)? What if they are, in fact, pushing for the same thing — Skinnerian control and coercion?
Worse, what if it is true — as I now know it to be true — that rewards thwart creative thought, the free-flow of dreams, the unpredictable dance that is creation?
When I was gifted an A and gallery real estate for every painted green meadow, I was elated; but also, in a strange way, without air. I could not risk letting my brush move in ways it wasn’t accustomed to; I couldn’t risk letting the sky seep into the earth. I could not risk ‘taking chances, playing with possibilities, following hunches that might not pay off’, for the objective was ‘not to engage in an open-ended encounter with ideas; it [was] simply to get the goody’ (Kohn).
Eventually, bored or terrified, I drifted towards other forms of expression. By then I was older. I was out of school. I had learnt to respire.
In Greece, when I attempted a self-portrait, the face on canvas was wistful — as though in a state of perpetual mourning; it had been severed from all that was meant to be pleasurable.
For too long, we’ve viewed rewards as well-intentioned strategies. But the baubles we offer our children to obey and learn — the A’s and the gold stickers and the praise-full-of-intent — these are disingenuous things; and therefore, startlingly dangerous.
In the end, all objections must be philosophical. To quote Alfie Kohn: ‘The question is not whether more flies can be caught with honey than with vinegar, but why the flies are being caught in either case — and how this feels to the fly.’
I want for my son — in these early years, anyway — the right to be more than a common housefly. I wish to secure him from spaces that tantalise with tchotchkes and huzzahs and 10/10s. I want for him — and oh, for all of our children — the freedom to experiment — to sing and romp and, now, squirt permanganate blue — for the sheer joy of it.
I want it to be known that the exuberance of blue is the reward.
Dharini Bhaskar is the author of These, Our Bodies, Possessed by Light. She is working on her next novel and can be reached at dharini.b@gmail.com
