Given this agenda, rewards and punishments are inevitably soul-denying. Their minds couldn't override the stress. I feel bad, but it makes it easier for me to get a good grade. Rewards devalue genuine human activity. Take learning, for example.
Humans love to learn.
Babies would rather learn than eat. But when rewards are introduced, the message is that learning is not as important, not as valuable, as getting the reward. By the time they graduate, they dislike school and conceive of themselves as just doing time until they can get out. Their innate joy of learning is gone. Rewards and punishments hide real consequences, replacing them with artificial reward-punishment consequences.