In the 1820s, the Society for Progressive Education in New York introduced a system of redeemable tokens as rewards for correct school work and a system of fines for various offenses in the school. This was done to discourage corporal punishment, the most common means of "motivating students" in that day, the use of which the society disapproved. This early version of the "token economy" was abandoned in the 1830s because the trustees of the society came to feel that "they were more often rewarding the cunning than the meritorious" and that the system of tokens "fostered a mercenary spirit" (Ravich, 1974).
John Condy (1977) "Enemies of Exploration: Self-Initiated Versus Other-Initiated Learning" , J Personality and Social Psychology 35(7) p459, quoting Diane Ravitch (1974) The great school wars. New York: Basic Books.
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