Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School?
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School?
In junior high school, one of my classmates had a TV addiction — back before it was normal. This boy — we’ll call him Ethan — was an encyclopedia of vacuous content, from The A-Team to Who’s the Boss?
Then one day Ethan’s mother made him a bold offer. If he could go a full month without watching any TV, she would give him $200. None of us thought he could do it. But Ethan quit TV, just like that. His friends offered to let him cheat at their houses on Friday nights (Miami Vice nights!). Ethan said no.
One month later, Ethan’s mom paid him $200. He went out and bought a TV, the biggest one he could find.
This is a fascinating piece by Amanda Ripley for Time Magazine about the work of Harvard economist named Roland Fryer Jr. who’s done studies of this in numerous US cities. The results aren’t what you might think and the piece is worth reading.
Should kids be bribed to do well in school?
In my opinion, children at school should not be bribed even if they have study well. It is not a good idea because it makes children dependable from encouragement. First of all, some schools fund organization with located in the poor districts cannot use this system. Even if school will have such a fund, money always could be finished. Suppose it happened in reality, and children, who receive such encouragement for over a year became dependable. As a result, child’s mind will be damaged, and child might stop study well.
Lola: I like and agree with your thinking. Did you read the entire article though? If you did you’d get a slightly bigger picture of this.
Some folks are using bribery to break the logjam of motivation and then, once behaviors are changed backing off on it. Of course, not all students (and people in general) react in the same way to external goals, which is what bribes are really.
I hope you’ll take the time to read the article, it’s quite fascinating and reading it broadened my view of the topic.
This actually boils down to knowing that college is definitely not for everyone but bribing takes the cake. Ive heard of incorporating the reward system to child-rearing but bribing is just too much. It won’t really damage the child’s mind, like Lola says it will, but perhaps it will change how the child views his education and his future. I understand parents arrive at a point where they feel troubled and uncertain about their children’s successes in school enough to hand them cash to compensate. And I believe when the article said, “Psychologists warn that money can actually make kids perform worse by cheapening the act of learning” But again, what might work for them might not work for anyone else.
Kristine
Kristine,
You might enjoy Daniel Pink’s discussion on motivation. He’s been talking about how education and business are not using what science is showing: that except for rote learning, people are incentivized by autonomy, mastery, and purpose, not by external rewards.
Daniel Pink at TED