Comments on: Pay for grades — does it work?

By: peterjohns

peterjohns — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:09:19 +0000

There are many problems that might arise from using money as a motivator:

Kids might bully and threaten other kids to do their homework, to make money. kids may try and "work" or even threaten teachers when money is involved. When we're talking in the thousands of dollars, who's to say that kids and teachers won't be in cahouts? If the teacher gives a better grade, the kid might actually pay the teacher off. That's teaching kids "fraud." In some situations a child might go home and get physically or verbally abused for not getting certain grades because the parents have now actually become partially dependent on that "grade money" as a source of income.

It all sounds extreme, but not too long ago "paying for grades" sounded extreme and so did "shootings in schools." (For that matter, so did "paying for water.")

The rest of this comment can be found at (can't post whole thing here for copyright reasons):

http://www.helium.com/items/1255293

By: DLS

DLS — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:36:53 +0000

Also, one year in grade school, our class was exposed year round to money, and it included an incentive, but was in no way done out of desperation or out of warped morality. In fifth grade we were all given checkbooks to keep in balance and given a small amount of pay weekly or bi-weekly, along with “bills” we had to pay. There was no reason to wait for high school to expose us to the real world and thinking about money and arithmetic (and accounting). The incentives were there, too. Anyone who did especially well on something was given a reward, whereas (the kind of thing you'd never see in today's PC-laced environment in schools, because it is negative), students who misbehaved didn't get demerits, such as in junior or senior high school, but had to pay _fines_. To be able to enjoy this or that special activity, we had to “pay” for it out of our “accounts.” To keep us kids future-oriented and to (perish the thought now) get us to defer gratification, we had a commitment through the year that at the end of the year, those of us who had saved so many dollars in our “accounts” would be able to afford to pay for — a class field trip to a big-league baseball game at the end of the year.

That's a lot more instructive as well as better than bribing kids who should know better.

By: DLS

DLS — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:31:12 +0000

Nowadays a bribe is seen as useful, if not the development of a future kind of entitlement.

By: CStanley

CStanley — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:52:09 +0000

Gee, in my day we had a 'pay for grades' incentive program but it worked a bit differently. The reward for working hard and learning was to earn a diploma, earn entrance into a good college, and possibly merit scholarships.