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Morning Open Thread: Bribing Kids For Good Grades? |
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Back during our issue on education, I wrote about a promising new program in New York City designed to pay parents and students who make an effort and invest in a child’s education:
The program’s wider aim is to eliminate poverty, but it uses a novel approach to do so. The city will pay small amounts of money to residents for certain behaviors, incentivizing things the government wants to promote. To fight poverty, adults will receive $150 a month for holding a full time job and $50 a month for having health care. New York is using the program to incentivize good educational behavior outside of school as well. They will pay parents to make sure their kids have better high school attendance and to attending parent-teacher conferences.
Recently, the program has been expanded to pay students for certain grades, as part of a more national effort that can involve giving kids things like pizza parties or gift certificates if certain achievement levels are reached.
I think this is a good idea, and well worth trying. While critics would say paying students for grades doesn’t instill in them the love of learning for learning’s sake, I argue that you must look at the reality of the situation these children are in as well. Virginia Connelly, the principal of Junior High School 123, in the Soundview section of the Bronx, agrees:
“We’re in competition with the streets,†Ms. Connelly said. “They can go out there and make $50 illegally any day of the week. We have to do something to compete with that.â€Â
If inventivizing good grades keeps kids off the streets and learning, that’s a good thing. And it’s not like these kids aren’t gaining knowledge. To get a reward, children have to earn the grades, which presumably means they learned something in the process.
As I said, I’m all for this experiment. What do you think?
I think you must be out yo’ mutha’ lovin’ mind. ”’
Is there nothing left of society? Has it all gone out with the drought? Sweet lord. Must every single thing in the existence of man come back, always, and even unto the edumacatifying of it’s progeny, to MONEY!? Bribes? Payoffs? Big pimpin, g-thug blingin’, ‘moves her body like a cyclone, buwshiite?!’
It is my contention that the problems of today lie not with the youth, nor with lack of incentives. But with the ever cow-towing adults in whom tomorrow’s generation is entrusted. Were it not for the parents, teachers, legislators, and administrators who consistently abandon principle, flee legitimacy, and refuse to fight for higher (or even average) standards, we would not, today, find ourselves in consideration of plans to pay-off our youth for what is - or should be - the PRIVELEDGE of receiving a free education.
I can make a very reasonable and well grounded argument that humanity is in the process of de-evolving, intellectually at least. And the number one enabler for this high speed pursuit of purest hell is a social hierarchy that accepts plans, such as this one, to tolerate the way things have become and address resolution with economy aforethought. In this case: To tolerate an endemic level of student disinterest in rote, standardized course material and board-certified class presentation; To address student disillusionment by appealing to their most base, crude, childish, selfish, and egocentric sensibilities by promising them cash gifts in exchange of a minimum, lowest common denominator participation with that tutalege which shall undeniably shape their every living, breathing moment from now until the end of their days.
So, no! No, I say! Indubitably, I disagree… though humbly. (?)
(Yeah, right.)
I do not believe that the failures of America’s public education systems can or (even if they could) should be remedied by throwing money, or any other such promise, at children. But that we must FIX what is broken, add to that which is found lacking… Rather than pay people to avert their eyes from what failures abound.
This is not a life in which the means can be justified by the ends!
I don’t think you’ll find argument from me that America’s schools and the social structure around them are in need of serious repair. As you say, the issue lies often at the heart of standardized curriculums and the learning process.
This change will take time. Demanding new ways of teaching is a long process. By and large, learning is a function not only of school but of home life. Programs that pay students for good grades also can and do pay for parents to become involved in a child’s education. These habits instilled in the children will be passed onto the next generation. That’s a worthy goal.
And, as we attempt this process, paying students for good grades in the interim I don’t have a problem with. These changes won’t happen overnight. For now, we should do what we can with what we have as well.
While I have to agree with the fact that the school system needs to be fixed, the idea behind the giving money to parents for good grades is understandable, expessully for those who come from a low income family. It is proven many times that homelife effects how children learn and the parents and children that this would best effect are those who have lack of money for extra books for reading and for enough food to have breakfast before school. There have to be some parents out their who are also trying to get their kids out of that cycle that they were in.
When I was in elementary school, we had a program to promote reading outside of school. If we did enough reading during the month, we were rewarded with free pizza (courtesy of Pizza Hut); there were also parties in school, I believe; and at the end of the year, tickets to Six Flags were given to those who had met the monthly reading criteria x number of months during the eyar.
I’m sure lots of other people had it as well (I think it was called BookIt!), but it was one way to bring together parents and students for the sake of reading, to give the school a way to promote reading (which is one of the most significant ways parents can contribute to their children’s intellectual development!), and reward kids for doing something they might not do without the incentive.
It was a simple but effective scheme, not quite the same as paying parents and students for fulfilling the basic requirements of public education, but I suppose different times demand different incentives…?