Points win prizes: Rewarding students with gifts for academic results can often work to their detriment, writes Dr Tony Humphreys

Early June is on the horizon when many students will sit their final school examination, some with burning ambition and others just secretly wanting to get the examination over with. The sad fact is that sitting the Leaving Cert tends to be accompanied with threats, dire predictions or promises of rewards for high performance.

These threats can take many verbal and non-verbal forms (tone of voice, cross facial expression, finger wagging and so on): "You know that this examination is so important"; "The results of this examination will follow you for the rest of your life"; "Do us proud this year".

Threats and cajoling induce fear and resentment and are more likely to effect any one or more of a number of defensive responses - rebelliousness, perfectionism, learning problems or sickness. Furthermore, the need for parents or teachers to threaten Leaving Cert students would suggest that a motivational problem already exists, and attendance to that is far more desirable.

Motivational problems can be bi-directional - under-drive or over-drive. It is between these two extremes that mature motivation lies.

Under-drive is an avoidance and rebellious response to being punished for not meeting parents' and teachers' academic expectations. It is a sad fact that certain behaviours - high achievement, success - become more important than the child. Wisely, children subconsciously reduce experiences of their presence being darkened, by avoidance of the behaviours that are a source of threat, and by playing down their unlimited intellectual potential. Children are masters at convincing adults of "I'm average", "I wouldn't be good at that", "Don't expect too much". Of course, adults use similar protective strategies, and children have good teachers for the development of such mechanisms.

An over-drive motivation is where students strive relentlessly for high academic performance in order to gain recognition. Every child and adult needs to be loved for self; when this is not forthcoming, some children find a substitute that fits in with the unrealistic expectations of their parents and others. Success has become a common addictive substitute for the real craving to be loved for self. Such students, and adults, can become besotted with the substitute goal, and attempt to satisfy their craving with more and more success experiences. They have thus become success "junkies" or "addicts", who are in a place of denial that they have mistaken their goal, and need to go on looking. They are firmly in the grip of fear, performance anxiety, delusion and academic over-drive.

It is all too easy for parents, teachers and others to delude themselves with the substitute value of socially acceptable addictions - work, success, wealth, knowledge, status and so on. Ironically, these addictions cause as much personal, interpersonal, family, work and spiritual problems as the "socially unacceptable" addictions - alcohol, drugs, sex, violence, and gambling. However, whilst individuals with the latter substitutes frequently get help, the former "acceptable" addictive group rarely do.

Promising students rewards (money, holiday, car) for Leaving Cert points achieved is not a desirable motivational play. It destroys the intense value of learning and creates an extrinsic dependence on tangible acknowledgements outside self. Furthermore, young people know that they are not being valued for themselves, but for what they achieve, and are likely to resist such manipulation. When they conform to it, there will always be a hidden resentment and they can end up living life according to the demands of others, and lose touch with their own unique worth.

Students, parents and teachers need to refocus on what is the real search - peace with self and others - and move away from the substitute goals of success, status, power and wealth. Paradoxically, such refocusing restores the intrinsic love of learning that is present in all of us, which leads to greater learning and creativity, without the baggage of fear.

Dr Tony Humphreys is a consultant clinical psychologist