Kids getting paid to acheive in school?

[HiTech]

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I am not keen on this idea. It only serves to divert education monies that are better spent on facilities improvments, holding the line on increasing school taxes, and educational resources/opportunities. While there seems to be some valid arguments in favor of paying (or rewarding however you wish to call it) of which I understand, in the big picture, I believe it ultimately cultivates a society of grown children who will perform, work, or act only when there is a concrete gain in it for them.... and not so much from the abstract side like having pride, responsibility and self-advancement. This is a typical scheme, popular amongst left-wingers. And of course many teachers would welcome this since it makes attaining state mandated standards that much easier.

Feel free to voice your thoughts on this matter.

 

[smanches]

Absolutely terrible idea. Whole generations whose only thought is how much money they are going to get by doing something.

When are they going to learn how to work together, instead of competing against each other all the time?

 

[Hero999]

The problem is that most children are unwilling to work towards long term goals which I think it's essential for being successful in life.

I admit that I'm very impulsive and do what I want to much rather than what I should which is why I feel that I've underachieved in life.

I think that if children can be motivated into working towards a long term goal then they will do much better.

I'm not sure that money is the answer, to be honest it wouldn't have motivated me much and still doesn't but I admit I'm strange.

 

[tcmtech]

I think that giving weak rewards, financial or otherwise, for getting good grades is dumb concept just the same as is punishing students for having bad grades regardless of how or why they get them.
Some people just dont get the material others just dont get the system. I never fully got how anyone could possibly buy into the systems standards and expectations so I did without my rewards and took little concern with my punishments simply because they too had little meaning to motivate me. I saw them as someone else's standards that I did not believe in so following or conforming to them simply had no purpose to me.

I find that the concept of paying kids now to get good grades is likely to just give more kids a bad education since they are now given a motivation to learn bad or wrong information and follow poorly conceived practices and ideals which will make schools and education in general that much worse off. It will just give kids more reasons to excel at doing badly and not want to question it which will make the testing and evaluation system that much more skewed in the wrong ways.
As of now if a school has a large percentage of students doing poorly that tends to show that the school has a poor method of educating the students. But if the students are now more motivated to learn the wrong things they will test higher on the standardized testing which will make weak schools with poor educational methods look falsely better and thus will receive more financial incentives to continue on with that low level of teaching.
It creates a spiral of do poor but look good and get rewarded which motivates them to do even poorer to get rewarded again and again and again.


Here is how it worked/didn't work for me.
Growing up my parents tried everything to get me to follow the standards.
I can recall getting a reward of $100 for an A grade, $25 for a B grade, and nothing for C or less.
Fortunately I have never been all that motivated to do things because of money and I am not one to jump through hoops for others petty satisfaction and I never really cared what my friends got for grades either so as far as I can recall so I had no reason to hold myself to that peer standard either as well.
I dont think I made more than $25 for any year in school I can remember if I did there was always some convenient post stipulation they made up that kept me from getting it any way. I was no dummy by any standards but in fact tested to be very intelligent which just irritated them all that much more as to why I could care less about my grades and any forms of reward or punishment that was associated with them for good or bad.
Mostly I just felt that I had good enough reasons to believe that regardless of how well I did I would still get cheated on the reward in then end so why bother doing all that work for nothing but to receive another disappointment for my efforts in the end.

To this day I rely on myself and generally do not associate how good or bad my life is based on others ideals or standards to any great degree. I succeed where I need to and I do not care what others think. Especially when they try to hold me to what I see as their fake, shallow, or unrealistic standards.

 

[Hero999]

I never worked hard at school or college.

My grades varied fairly widely, my highest was a B and the lowest an E (G to A* grading scale). I got high grades in science, electronics, poor grades in languages and average grades everywhere else. In the lessons I enjoyed I was well behaved, in the lessons I hated I was badly behave and often rude to the teacher. I remember my history teacher standing in for my electronics teacher and couldn't believe how well behaved I was compared to how I used to behave in his lesson. I remember him tried to make me do my history homework, he shouted at me, gave me detention without any success. I didn't see the point as I only dropped history the following year when I was given a choice of which subjects to study.

I think that all subjects should have been made more interesting and practical, all the way from the primary to further education. I don't see the point in learning lots of things that are never going to be used. I still think it's important to teach children that they're are certain things that they have to do but they're not going to like and be made to suffer the consequences of their inactions. For example, you set some science students some homework to plan an interesting experiment for the next lesson, those that don't do it have to sit in the corner and do lines or read a text book rather than doing it. It's common sense really, get the children interested in the subject and they'll want to do it, including some of the less interesting parts.

 

[smanches]

There is also the issue that legally the money cannot go to the kids. Until they are 18 years old, the money goes to the parents or in a trust fund until the kid reaches 18.

You bring up a good point tcmtech. I almost flunked high school, but not because I didn't learn the material, but because I HATED the system, and would buck it any chance I got. I fortunately made it though, due to the understanding of a few of my teachers that understood not everyone is the same.

My mother tried to entice me with money for grades. It didn't help one bit, as money does not motivate me. I feel I must balance out the greed in the world.

 

[Ross Craney]

Absolutely terrible idea. Whole generations whose only thought is how much money they are going to get by doing something.

When are they going to learn how to work together, instead of competing against each other all the time?

After they leave school the go on to work for someone whose sole purpose is just that - make money at all cost. While I know it is not quite what this thread is about , my kids pocket money goes up or down depending on their school results.

 

[Vizier87]

I didn't get ANY pocket money during my schooldays. So now I'll make sure my kids (I don't have any, I might in 6 years from now) will suffer too. Makes me much stronger and resistant towards being a spendthrift.

 

[amando96]

I think it's a good idea, high school is stressfull, uses up most of your day, some students actually have to work while in highschool, so being paid for attending classes isn't that bad of an idea, i had to quit high school to get a job, because transport, books, all added up to a lot of money spent, and in the end of the year the books go to the trash, and here you will have to spend 400€ + just on books...

And also there are those ''rich kids'' that their parents buy trips to ''goldville'' and stupid overpriced game consoles when they get good grades, this could make the high school drop out kids think twice...

 

[Thunderchild]

reminds me of the notion children already have to "pass" it does not matter what they actually know or achieve it's the passing that matters: WRONG,

I was one of only 3 in a class of 18 that was genuinely interested in electronics, they all wanted to pass their exam and wanted the diploma and thought that was the important thing yet could not even read the 1000+ page manual that told them every electronic concept they would ever need and apply it to the very simple problem they were given of calculating the output of a differential op amp circuit to get that diploma. I was one of the only 3 that actually designing from scrated my own project with no help or copying portions of another project to present at my final exams, I am the only one of that class that is probably still climbing the ladder knowledge becuase I want to and can actually see that even if a hobby I could actually make money from that hobby (the money I may have been bribbed with to "learn" ?).

You go to school to learn the skills you will need to make yourself a living as an adult, it's this pay for turning up mentality that got us into the current recesion and banking crash, and the goverments did not even take a lesson from that and are implementing it at the very basis of societies future. Well done why don't they just let off enough nuclear bombs to destroy the entire human race, it would be far easier you know !

 

[Thunderchild]

I think it's a good idea, high school is stressfull, uses up most of your day, some students actually have to work while in highschool, so being paid for attending classes isn't that bad of an idea, i had to quit high school to get a job, because transport, books, all added up to a lot of money spent, and in the end of the year the books go to the trash, and here you will have to spend 400€ + just on books...

And also there are those ''rich kids'' that their parents buy trips to ''goldville'' and stupid overpriced game consoles when they get good grades, this could make the high school drop out kids think twice...

the solution to that is free schooling and books, plus admitting a student or giving him/her a grant based on his/her merit, a willing student will want to learn more and thats a far better pay off than cash, it will build much more than giving handouts, I understand your predicament as I studied in Italy where school books are not free and they change them every year because the book company gives the tracher a handout for using their books and so you cannot buy second hand books as they change each year. I was one of the few that had all the books especially the electronics ones.

 

[trennonix]

This is my last year in high school, and my parents never paid me a dime for getting good grades and they have never punished me for getting bad grades (maybe 100$ at the end of a year and no pocket money). When I got a bad grade my father used to yell at me, explain why should I study or stop talking to me for a couple of days.
For him, putting me in a private school was a reward on its own.

I do hate the system and I do question it quite often, but I go along with it and try to get good grades in order to get into a good university.
Sitting around and protesting the system will get us no where, unfortunately we’ll just have to accept it.

For the last couple of years I didn't study hard enough so I won't get accepted early in engineering. I’ll have to take a test this summer which is basically a competition: the top 100 (just thrown a random number) students will get accepted.

I’m not saying that my father was wrong, but if leading a child to the right path with small rewards will get him to the big goal then it’s fine. It’s like leading a donkey by putting a carrot in front of him.

For me, the rich kids who get the stupid overpriced game consoles are lucky bastards because my parents were never able to afford such a treat.
Knowing that if I work hard enough and get a good job I’ll be able to get all the toys I ever wanted is my motivation .
Thus I consider myself materialistic, so, lack of rewards will give you someone who is only willing to work for money or at least strongly driven by money.

 

[Hero999]

the solution to that is free schooling and books, plus admitting a student or giving him/her a grant based on his/her merit, a willing student will want to learn more and thats a far better pay off than cash, it will build much more than giving handouts, I understand your predicament as I studied in Italy where school books are not free and they change them every year because the book company gives the tracher a handout for using their books

Ive heard all sorts of stories about Italy being horribly corrupt, is it ture?

and so you cannot buy second hand books as they change each year. I was one of the few that had all the books especially the electronics ones.

Well, I would just see if I could download them from somewhere and put them on a cheap laptop.

Unfortunately bittorrent didn't exist when I was at school which makes me feel old.

 

[3v0]

It is admitting we have failed to motivate students.

As I see it this is responsibility shared in various degrees by everyone.

Most kids are clueless by our design, or lack of it.

 

[Thunderchild]

Ive heard all sorts of stories about Italy being horribly corrupt, is it ture?

well as far as our schooling not that much: the electronics teacher handed over the results to the state exam multiple choice exam 2 months before the exam took place and told us to memorise them, the students doing to automated home project were handily told that all they needed to do was use the same opamp circcuit and lay it out differently for each "home automation". The lab tech liked me that much that getting himto do my PCB was hopeless and in the end I used vero board. The 3 of us that could use the electronics manual we were allowed to use in the state exam gave out the results to the rest of the class under the teachers "watchful eye" whilst the exam board president (a teacher from another school) knew that this was probably happening but didn't care providing he was wisked off to the bar by the other teachers, apart from that the word corrupt does not even come to mind despite being the only one to single handedly design my project I was given just enough grades to shut me up but then I was that foreigner and no I didn't give a toss about the grades and know that I'm far better off now through my own efforts than anyone else I went to school with.

 

[HiTech]

It is admitting we have failed to motivate students.

As I see it this is responsibility shared in various degrees by everyone.

Most kids are clueless by our design, or lack of it.

IMHO it's another factor of the breakdown of modern American Society.

 

[tcmtech]

Thats one of the key problems that kids are experiencing.
They are clueless to the bigger picture of how what they know or dont know will affect their lives some day. They are given more reasons to not want to think and those who do think for themselves get separated out and discouraged from doing it for any number of reasons. For what ever reason those who are capable of independent thought and critical thinking in regards to what they are learning are seen as being wrong and highly discouraged for it.

As of now it seems that the slowest kids set the standards for the class and those who are above that kid get singled out and discouraged from being better just so that those slow kids dont feel bad about themselves. All the while the smarter and more capable ones are punished or have their willingness to learn slowly drained out of them until they are equal in capacity to the slowest of the class.

That was my feeling nearly 20+ years ago in my school experiences. I was very smart and more than capable of thinking for myself and I spent far more time learning at my pace which was considerably faster than most others my age. In grade school I was that kid who loved getting in trouble just so I could read from the encyclopedia sets in class and do a report on anything! Some punishment that was!
Yet strangely I was not encouraged for having that ability to learn faster than most but rather continually made to feel that I was a problem instead because I could not drop to the level of the rest of the class. I was that kid who got bad grades because what they where covering in class was something that was old information to me that I had already learned and was able to understand weeks, months and occasionally even a year or two earlier.
I had no reasons to do my class work because it was dull and served no gain by my standards. More often I simply saw it as just more useless dummy work which had no further purpose for me and was a total waste of my time to keep redoing.
To me even to this day it seems sick to punish or discourage the above average kids and hold them back on how fast they can learn because they dont fit the pre described speed and attitude of the minority.

This no child left behind garbage should be dropped and about 1/4 of the kids in this country should be made to feel so horribly ashamed of how dumb they are just so that they will try harder and the top kids should be raised up high and given every reason to feel that they are superior and more capable. And those who fall in the middle should full well know why they are in the middle too.

Boo Hoo, Little Bobby gets to have low self esteem now because he just found out he is dumber than dirt and now everyone else does not have to drop to his level any more to make him feel good about himself. And little Freddy for once gets to strut his stuff and stand proud because he is doing classwork a full grade level or two ahead of everyone else!

 

[kchriste]

I was very smart and more than capable of thinking for myself and I spent far more time learning at my pace which was considerably faster than most others my age.

You forgot modest.

This no child left behind garbage should be dropped and about 1/4 of the kids in this country should be made to feel so horribly ashamed of how dumb they are

Ah yes, NCLB, the "brain" child of George W Bush.
Well, it wasn't entirely GWB's fault as it was passed with bipartisan support, but it was his administration's idea.

I have to agree that paying kids to do well in school is just stupid. As far as money is concerned, kids should learn how to handle it at an early age. One method is for parents to give them a frugal allowance for buying clothes, supplies, and other necessities. Then let them sink or swim. If they blow all their money on chips and pop, they get to wear those ratty jeans, etc until the next "payday" rolls around.

 

[tcmtech]

Modesty nothing'.
I got handed my butt far too many times to not want to change who I was intellectually, morally, and in character and general self confidence.
I had my bully's and I took the crap they dished out until I developed thick enough skin to take it and enough self confidence to start out smarting them at their own game.
I may have started my childhood as a whiny weak little blond haired boy with fragile feelings but I grew out of it. I don't pull my punches and I have no problem hitting below the belt if I feel it justifies the nessisary ends to defeat a cheater or knock down a loud mouth who is asking for it.
I didn't become who I am because everyone made me feel that I am the undeserving king of the world or that I am good at everything I do. Rather I became who I am to prove them wrong and show that in fact I can become someone who is better than them much to their dislike.

Saddly I feel a whole generation now is having that self confidence and character bleached right out of them and it sickens me. There are winners and there are losers in every thing and not everyone deserves ice cream after playing a bad game to make them feel better about performing poorly or because they met someone who is better than them at something.

 

[Vizier87]

Man TCM, you must be typing like a geek movie star. It's a pain to read your long posts, sorry if I'm being direct here. I'd like to read them, but they're superfluous most of the time.