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Kids Score 40 Percent Higher When They Get Paid For Grades
A large number of schools participating in a pay-for-grades program have seen test scores in reading and math go up by almost 40 percentage points. The Sparks program will pay seventh-graders up to $500 and fourth-graders as much as $250 for good performance on 10 assessment tests. About two-thirds of the 59 schools in the program improved their scores by margins above the citywide average. "It's an ego booster in terms of self-worth. When they get the checks, there's that competitiveness -- 'Oh, I'm going to get more money than you next time' -- so it's something that excites them," said Rose Marie Mills, principal at MS 343 in Mott Haven. Critics, who are unaware that most college students don't become liberal arts majors, argue that paying kids corrupts the notion of learning for education's sake alone.
did they pay this kid?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Exactly. One of the most important lessons we can teach our children -to delay short-term gratification in order to achieve a greater long-term result- falls by the wayside when we start these bribery schemes.
The idea that offering real rewards for achievement would make a difference is something that should have been obvious to anyone. This environment of PC-Everybody-Gets-A-Trophy has really screwed people up quite badly. I will be very glad when the whole PC mentality gets scrapped.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
"Critics, who are unaware that most college students don't become liberal arts majors, argue that paying kids corrupts the notion of learning for education's sake alone." I don't know anyone who learns for the sakes of education. I don't think the 40% of kids who did better would have done so just to learn either. Money is motivation. Learning just for the hell of it is not. I wish they did this when I was in school. I got really poor grades in classes that I did no care about. I would have done much better if they paid me to learn the things that I found (and still are) useless.
It's not terribly surprising. A big problem with kids (high-school included) is that they don't understand the value of an education. If you pay them then their short-sighted nature is much more likely to place a value on it.
39.6 percentage points higher than last year, when the kids were in third grade.
Does this mean that kids are 39.6% smarter than we thought they were? They just needed a reason to show it?
To people under the age of ten a six month reward cycle is a long term thing.
Hell for most college students, six months is long term.
You mad
This is dangerous: studies have shown that when you give extrinsic motivation for something, the intrinsic motivation tends to die away.
True, but isn't this how the United States civilization works?
You stop paying someone to do something and then they stop doing that something? You know like what the RIAA and MPAA says about artists? If they don't get paid money, then no art will ever be made?
Maybe I'm being a bit facetious here but considering how the "grown up" world works in regards to doing something only out of the benefit of being paid, we might as teach our kids early there is no such thing as charity.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
This is the society we have built. Consumerism, greed, status seeking etc.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I know, it's a joke, but you'll probably be disappointed. Everyone you'll be competing with has a degree, the subject of the degree and the magnitude are now the dominate forces (even when ridiculous). In some areas right now they argue you need a PhD to do silicon verification, when in fact I think you probably don't need any degree, at all to do what the job ACTUALLY requires. It's just a matter of having a huge number of equally qualified applicants after the same job.
The problem with this, for all of you who have jobs, is not about some wishy washy bullshit about "the joy of learning", it's about manipulating metrics for maximum return. It's not about how much you learned or how well you can apply your knowledge, but how to appear best on paper to get the paycheck. When the rubber meets the road, are you any more qualified to do what you say you can do? We've all known people who groomed that 4.0 GPA (or close to it), who didn't amount to anything or who got washed ashore when they jumped in the ocean.
To be fair, it is a very applicable life skill to large corporation life, and we all have to do it from time to time. But if you look around your organizations and note the flaws, defects and absolutely mind-bogglingly braindead behavior that somehow persist...behind each one of those is usually some bogus metric that says "we're great!". The road to hell is paved with broken metrics.
To the present day businessman, nothing else matters but making money today. Thus any short term manipulation that demonstrably shows profit, is a good behavior. To almost any other profession, including responsible businessmen, you have to be sustainable through at least your career, or however long it takes to return what you owe, ride out tough times, and guarantee your future. Teaching kids how to act in their short term best interests exclusively is not at all the right way to go.
I wonder if this would help keep kids on the books and off the pipe or off the corner selling dope... I mean if you could earn $500 for getting a good grade then it might not be so desirable for the kids to seek out gangs and drugs as a source of income... The situation is much more complicated, but it does eliminate some of the argument from the inner city kids who state that studying ain't gonna put food on the table. I know, many people are yelling "That is the parents job", but that is not reality for an inner-city kid with 4 siblings and 1 parent who is addicted to booze and/or drugs and spends any state/fed assistance on their habit....
You DO need a lot of study if you wanna be a musician. A REAL musician. Not those instant teen singers.
Your son has some mental issues. He will probably turn to drugs to deal with it, or commit suicide. You should get him some professional help.
I know this because the exact same thing happened to me.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
OK, not to rain on this parade, but....isn't our educational system pretty much predicated on cramming as much info into your head only to have you barf it back out on a test, never to use it again without looking it up?
No one seems to be asking the deeper questions:
Why do we have to pay kids to learn/study?
What are the specific flaws in the system?
What are we testing for?
What do we want to test for?
Are the testing methods adequate to the task?
Polly want a cracker?
I'm a happy pessimist. I expect and prepare for the worst, when it doesn't happen I am pleasantly surprised.
Rich kids that go to public school already know what this is all about.
When one is artificially paid for a commodity that is normally without value, the acquisition of that commodity for sale is just good business.
In other words I get paid 10 bucks for an A, I well pay you 5 bucks to get it for me, and make a tidy sum, or "buy your classwork from your poor student friends for better grades".
Oh well at least they are learning something! America's future at work!
It's a poor excuse for a study. The underlying issues in (USA) public education today are:
#1 - We don't stratify. In other words, we uniformly put the slowest idiots in with everyone else, rather than putting the brightest in one class and on down the line.
#2 - classes move at the pace of the slowest idiot. The dumb shits hold up class, the mediocre kids learn nothing as well, and the smart kids get so bored (waiting for socially-promoted 8th-grade retards to learn stuff they already mastered in 2nd grade) that they start acting up.
#3 - real standardized testing - you know, anything that might require the kids to have learned something and prove it - has vanished. Between that and social promotion, there is no expectation on the kids to achieve anything, despite clear and repeated case studies and larger-scale studies proving that holding kids to high expectations works. But since standardized testing started to mirror social problems - read: certain ethnic groups (black, illegal immigrant, etc) with near-zero family structure and a subculture that sees intelligence as race treason, were showing very poorly in the standardized tests - more and more of the tests have either been dumbed down to the point of uselessness, or have simply been done away with entirely.
Critics, who are unaware that most college students don't become liberal arts majors,
If you're going to offer the kids money, that's fine. One motivator works as well as another - when I was a kid, for example, a bunch of local restaurants chipped in and gave free meal coupons to any kid who made the honor roll.
First, though, you have to fix your metrics. The fact that they "doubled" achievement on the tests means little when the skills indicated by a "passing" grade on the newly-rebuilt "test" would, 20 years ago, have failed 2-3 grades lower.
The problem is, delaying gratification is hard, so it takes a huge delayed payout to motivate people. It may be cheaper overall to "front" people the money as an incentive sooner.
I see this occuring a couple places in society:
First, pensions in govt. and military jobs. They do encourage people to sign on, but I'll bet you could achieve the same incentive with a smaller, shorter-term payout that wouldn't put society on the hook for vast sums later on.
Second, doctor pay. I believe healthcare in the US would be more economical if we provided a smoother road for more people to become doctors, by paying a salary in medical school and as an intern, and making the hours better. This would drive down doctor pay, which we badly need to do.
I'd mod you up if I didn't have posts in this topic already. There are things in life you should be doing good no matter if you get a reward or not. Getting decent grades at school (specially if your parents are paying for it, is a way to let them know you actually care about their efforts), is one of them. There are so many things that go wrong when you start rewarding things that just shouldn't. It would be like paying people to be good. How wrong is that.
This will put even more pressure on teachers to teach to the tests. Especially in low-income areas (where these trials are being done), teachers want their students to get what they're worth.
Kids aren't "getting smarter" (by the way, what does "smart" entail?) They're learning to play the game that is the educational system.
Also, if the sponsoring organizations can afford to pay each kid $250-500, where the heck are they getting those funds, and why aren't they giving it to inner-city schools in the first place?
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
My parents paid me $10 for As (I got $20s/class if I got straight As) $5 for Bs -$5 for Cs -$10 for Ds and if I got a F, it didn't matter what my other grades were. I got nothing. After they started doing that, I was getting straight As.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
They would tell me that it was expected of me to get good grades, and I didn't deserve a reward for doing what I was supposed to be doing anyways.
This still seems wrong to me. I didn't tell my kids they were expected to get good grades. I told them that KNOWLEDGE WAS VALUABLE, gave them lots of evidence that this is the case, and let them figure out the rest themselves. Although now they are in high school they know that grades have taken on a new significance because they are used as inputs to the university entrance process, they've internalized the value system that it isn't the grades that are important, it's the knowledge, the skills, the breadth of mind.
Paying for grades is a logical outcome for a society that values neither education nor knowledge, but is interested in presenting itself as a meritocratic plutocracy. Grades are valued because they will get you into "good" schools, which are not the ones that teach the most but which generate the social connections and job opportunities to put you on the road to financial success. The value of eduction never enters into the equation.
Societies get what they reward. Teaching kids that the only thing worth pursing is money results in a society where the only way to get kids to do anything is to pay them. That's a bad thing.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
In the U.S. good education does not equal higher pay. Maybe it did at one time, but certainly it is no longer true.
I would argue that the getting a degree from the right combination of institutions is the gateway to higher pay. Two examples to prove my point.
4.0 from public schools ==> transfer into 2nd tier State University==>Enter workforce with 3.8 GPA and some lesser-known interships. This combination is not likely to end in higher pay. Rather, the student will probably make average wages in the first 5 years. What she does from there is up to her, but there are meaningful limits to the probability she would end up the most rewarded.
4.0 from private school attended by elites ==> transfer into 1st tier University==>Enter workforce with 3.8 GPA and some well-known interships. This combination is most likely to end in higher pay because they are most likely to be hired by companies that pay more in the first 5 years.
More importantly the 'pull yourself up by your own bootstraps' dream so often told in the U.S. has vanished due to the enormous costs of attempting the latter. This is part of the enormous class disparities that have grown in the last 20 years.
So, pay your kid to earn good grades at the end of each year. It's very far into **their** sense of the future.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Before long children will be asking to transfer to the schools that pay the best.
Or that have the dumbest students (easier competition).
Fully agreed, but until adults change the world so that it's not all about being paid, it's a bit unfair to teach them anything else.
It's interesting how adults want to raise kids with ideal world views but won't do squat to make the world fit the view or even spend a few moments considering how (and if) it might be accomplished.
If you're going to offer the kids money, that's fine.
No, it's not fine, it will have terrible long-term effects. This is called behavioral/operant conditioning, which, in the case of children, will become deeply entrenched into the personality that they will develop as they mature.
Don't confuse this with parents who give their children extra allowance if they get good grades. When the reinforcement comes from the same entity which is providing the challenge (in this case, the schools), it becomes a far more mechanical, "pavlovian" pattern. I seriously hope that some psychologists are monitoring this program.
This isn't just a matter of culture (as others mention on this thread), this could have long-term effects that are completely unpredictable.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Who said anything about learning? This is for grades. I suspect there are some underpaid teachers willing to accept kickbacks for adjusting a few grades.
It was not a 40% improvement in individual scores. The article states that in some schools it was a 40% improvement in the number of kids meeting some exam standard. What the prior or new scores and what the standard is was not given. Paying may help but I doubt by 40%.
On the subject of delayed gratification, it is even more difficult for children who have not been alive very long. Think of it this way. To a six year old who has been alive for 72 months, a 8 month school "year" is one tenth of their entire life. That is a LONG time. The equivalent time to a 30 year old is 36 months... or 3 years. Imagine telling a 30 year old that they are going to have to spend three years doing something before they get a reward. How would they react to it?
When I was growing up there were kids in my school who got paid for grades. I brought up the idea to my parents and they wanted nothing to do with it. On the other hand I had a pretty big allowance. The result is that I learned that money should come for free, and the idea of being financially rewarded for working is outrageous. I can assure you that when I have children, their allowance will be tied to their grades, and I will be there providing them the resources that they need to get good grades. When the report card shows up, they will have the opportunity to earn "a good amount" of money for their age.
As far as I'm concerned, paying kids for grades delivers the message... "If you work hard, you will be rewarded." School is the equivalent of work for kids. It gets them ready to go into the working world. It gives them an environment to develop the habits and abilities that they will need to become productive members of society. I don't have any problem rewarding them for progressing along the path to becoming a productive member of society.
Hell, I only got a degree so I could put off working another six years (what? change majors a few times, and you too can turn a four-year stint in lazy paradise into six years).
Wow - Your college experience was a helluva lot different than mine. When I was in school, I was working my ass off to cover tuition, books, rent, food, etc. And earning an engineering degree besides. I was in school for 6 years too, but only because I wanted a Master's, I managed to graduate High School as a college Sophomore, and I had to bail out of school a couple of times to take internships/co-ops that paid more than I could make locally.
Lazy paradise? I remember a foggy sleep-deprived existence that involved short naps between busting ass. What's your trick?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
my parents did the same thing, but i wish they hadn't. at 14 (when your grades really started to count) doing all the BS busy-work homework schools shove at you was much less interesting than the girls sitting around me, or the p.t. job that paid me.
http://kered.org
If a school pays kids for good grades, wouldn't they naturally transition to expecting to get a raise at work for good performance ?
:)
Whereas with parents paying for good grades would either leave kids feeling like they've gone as far as they can when their parents die, or depending on the government for being rewarded when they do good at work.
Could you explain the problem to me please ?
I really don't want to read some article you've dug up on the Internet either, I actually want to read the explanation in your own words, as you understand it.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
We don't stratify. In other words, we uniformly put the slowest idiots in with everyone else, rather than putting the brightest in one class and on down the line.
Putting the dumb kids in one class would only pigeon hole those kids. They would be made fun of at school, and systematically taught that they are not as good as the other kids. Whoever ends up teaching "the dumb class" would naturally have low expectations for these supposedly helplessly dumb students, and as we all know, teachers teach worse when their expectations are low. So your plan would help the kids who are already smart, while ruining the lives of kids who need the most help. Hell, many times putting a very dumb student in a class full of smart students improves the dumb student's grades, because good study habits rub off on them.
WTF?
How is this worse than kids not learning in the first place?
Most kids see no value in education because they're kids.
Paying them, not only prepares them for life, it stresses the value of hard work and provides real results for that work.
Kids learn both their curriculum and that working hard provides tangible returns.
They're using their grammar skills there.
As well as some underpaid parents willing to cheat with/for their kids...
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
"English Lit" is only half the equation. I think that for college to be a "lazy paradise" you need:
"English Lit" + "Easy source of income that doesn't mind funding your slacking ass"
As an engineering major, I could run off and co-op making 5-6x minimum wage. How people put themselves through college flipping burgers is beyond me... Especially if you're in one of those demographics that's discriminated against (or completely excluded) at scholarship time. May the gods bless the people doing that with one hand while supporting a family/kids with the other.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
You shouldn't get good grades to make your parents happy. I'm pragmatic, you should study and learn as much as you can when you're a kid because it makes life a lot easier later. Trying to "catch-up" in your last year of high school because you slacked off for the last 5 years is incredibly difficult. If you pay-as-you go, put in a little work every day, it turns out to be easier than a last minute scramble.
Also being an undereducated adult is very frustrating. Do you need everything you learn in school? No. But the issue is, you don't necessarily know ahead of time what you need and what you don't. It depends on the situation you find yourself in 10 years down the road.
Of course I didn't figure that out until it was almost too late, and many kids don't get it. Teenagers tend to not believe adults when we tell them that working hard and doing good in school is for their own benefit. Probably because adults lie to children all the time, and because teenagers are bad listeners.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Do you actually have a science, computer science or engineering degree? Except for the few who a) go into teaching or b) are the top 2% and land a reasearch posting ~90% of your university course load is completely unused on graduation. Of the 48 terms of class (4yrs @ 6 courses/term, 2 terms/yr), I think 6 (programming*2, comp architecture, sw engineering, digital communications * 2) apply to my top-paying telecom programming job.
Those who went into hw design (even more salary than programming) only use 4 courses...
The biggest waste was the 8 terms of advanced calculus. Unless you're doing primary research into magnetic field theory, knowing how to derive the LaPlace and other transforms is something you cram for, get your A, then gleefully drown in a several tankards of post-graduation partying.
It's unfortunate that the only rewards you can comprehend come in the form of monetary compensation. But hey, I guess that's as American as apple pie!
This country is so fucked.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
I don't give a shit why they learn, as long as they do it.
Yes but it isn't just that they are learning it is WHAT they are learning?
Are they actually developing good thinking and cognitive skills or are they studying to a test? Will they continue to learn even outside of school? Will what they learn actually stick around?
I suspect that it does help learning some but I also suspect that the learning done is heavily geared towards taking/getting through tests which often does not translate well to real-world performance.
A penalty is a significantly different motivator than a reward. If you do nothing but penalize rats, they will end up cowering in the corner doing nothing, even if you eventually institute a periodic reward. If you reward them for doing new things, they will keep trying new things, even if you periodically penalize them for doing the "wrong" thing.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Versus what we're doing now, which is teaching them to "Show up, slack off, and you'll get kicked out with a diploma eventually because we don't want to deal with you any more"? I'd much prefer monetary rewards. No, it's not the idealistic "right" thing to do, but guess what? It's realistic. The vast majority of people will not do something unless there's a tangible reward attached. Be it money, a trophy, whatever, it needs to be something, and it needs to be something that a child can attach value to. Because if you say "you'll get a good job in 10 years" means as much to an 8 year old as "something good might happen next century". There are a number of people who see the value in learning for the sake of it... but society as a whole? There are enough who don't that we need to somehow change motivators for them.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Survival of the most fit. What's wrong with giving the best advantages to the kids who can make the most of it? Is there some nobility to having a world full of mediocre achievers?
Putting "dumb"kids in class with "smart" kids limits the heights to which the smart kids can grow. Putting emotionally or psychologically deficient kids in class with normal kids is disruptive to the normal kids. Do you think the smart/normal kids want the dumb/deficient kids in their class? Of course not.
But guess what? The dumb/deficient kids don't want to be there either. These dumb/deficient kids would much prefer to be in classes with others that are more like them, so they can feel "normal" by comparison with their peers, and receive the appropriate teaching methodologies at a comfortable rate that allows them to feel a sense of accomplishment they otherwise could never achieve when mixed in with kids far above their intelligence.
You completely ignore the reality that many supposedly dumb kids are potential smart kids with no motivation to improve, because everyone around them tells them they are hopelessly dumb, and all their dumb friends think it's cool to be dumb.
The problem with paying for grades is that it takes No Child Left Behind even further - it now gives a solid price for cheating and "teaching to the test".
Before you started paying kids, it was just about teachers' rewards - like pay incentives and keeping their jobs. IIRC in some districts teachers' cheating approached 30% (I could be wrong on this; read Steven Levitt's Freakonomics.)
Now you've put a solid price on cheating.
In my experience, the best people on the job aren't those who got the best grades, it's the ones who overcame more than others, who demonstrated true effort. I can tell you stories aabout the penniless kids who boostrapped themselves from Harlem, or Mexico, or Eastern Europe. They make the best employees; they work hard, they value work, and they strive for improvement. Heck, I've had work crews get pissed because I told them they couldn't work on Thanksgiving.
So rewarding kids for grades has put a solid price on cheating, and will eventually result in kids saying: Pay me or I won't go to school.
Heinlein lampooned this in Stranger in a Strange land; perhaps those giving out money should actually read some literature.
I really would love to see a statistical analysis of the kids' tests.
I can honestly say that, at a minimum, 95% of what I learned in school was worthless. And, even though I'm a college graduate (3.7 GPA) - if you were to give me a 7th grade history exam, I would fail.
In fact, I'd probably fail most 7th grade exams.
The subject matter is pretty specific, even in 7th grade. Even a book I did read in 7th grade English class, now, is all but forgotten. If it was a book I enjoyed, I might remember, vaguely, the plot. Most English books stunk and I remember nothing of them.
Essentially everything I learned in school was to earn a piece of paper that said, 'This guy has a degree'. Even in my major, in college, the majority of what I learned had no use in my day-to-day activities as an adult. I studied mainframes programming languages in college. JCL, COBOL, ASM, a class in C. My first job out of college was programming in .Net - something I picked up from books while going to school.
I'd go so far as to say the *vast majority* of students are not learning for any particular reason at all. In the lower grades, they do what they are told. By college, most of the students, particularly the ones that are going to graduate - have selected a major that is going to lead to a job that will both pay their bills and be tolerable.
My gym teacher made > 100k to teach kids to play softball and basketball. He was also the 'trainer' so I guess he was involved with the sports teams.
Gym teacher.
> 100k.
This is in a town where the median *household* income is 60k.
Just sayin....
You mean that you're going to pay more money to the teachers that teach to the test rather than the ones that actually teach anything useful.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Oh, cut the left-wing political bullshit fantasy land nonsense where money doesn't exist and everyone holds hands and sings Kumbaya. Almost everything requires money some form down the line. Money is a reward because then the kids can go buy whatever they want with it (video game, candy, etc...) of their choice instead of one specific thing.
What do you expect? "Here son, you got good grades, let's sit and stare at this beautiful sunset together!"
I say this by first acknowledging that I have pretty much every book Heinlein wrote. But please do not bring in his libertarian wank dreams into a discussion about what is real literature. Heinlein's ideas worked in his books because he rigged the stories so that they worked in his books. Period.
He spung a good tale, and I've worn out more than a few copies of his stuff as a kid. But basing your life decisions on what a grumpy old man who had problems deciding if he was a libertarian or a facist WISHED the world was like rather than actually view the world head on, is as bad as doing what you claim those people you are snidely insulting have screwed up on.
Discipline (bootstraping or whever else you want to call it), is simply motivation. Yes, some people in bad situations often get the motivation to better their place in society simply to avoid being stuck in that situation for the rest of their life.
But that isn't the ONLY motivation in life and frankly, if you think the only way someone can be motivated is to have a shitty childhood, I suggest you put down your Frank Miller comics and rejoin the rest of us in society.
No, GPA shouldn't be the only measurement of someone's value in life. And it's extremely easy for some people to simply coast through most of their childhood and get to the end of it with a high GPA and absolutely no fucking idea how to survive in the real world. But that doesn't mean all of them have or that sitting back and saying "Fuck it, good grades for for nerds" is going to make you any more successful.
95% of what you learned in school was worthless?
So sad.
You know, I did a computing degree in Computer Science. I graduated in 1976.
I reckon I used most of it. Yup, even COBOL.
But what I learned, most essentially, was nothing about computing, as such.
I learned how to solve problems.
I learned how to learn new things.
I learned how to find things from book and people (no Internet then) and use that.
I learned how to - learn.
And it sounds like you did too.
From your parents, your friends, your school teachers, your university education you learned how to find out about your world and solve problems.
On the way, you probably picked up a stack of things you might not think useful - the capital of France, the name of the highest mountain in the world, the currency used in Germany (oops, that's changed - are you keeping up? .. I suspect you are). And you learned to stay up to date. This is good. You are a much more interesting person to talk to than someone who knows none of those things (not necessarily nicer, but probably more interesting).
Not educating people has been tried - it doesn't go well. In general, the countries that give the best education to the highest proportion of its citizens tend to be at the top of the human development index - and that that do badly end up at the bottom. Coincidence? No, I don't think so. (USA is not at the top - 15th - sad, isn't it? [Disclaimer - I live in Australia, at 4th position, so I'm biased])
Learning for a reason - perhaps not. No. I mean, there just aren't that many people that speak Latin, for example, but it is still fairly widely learned.
Again, what is learning about? If you learn just one thing you are going to do badly. When I studied my degree, the logical thing to do would have been to learn COBOL. Just COBOL. That's not what happened - and my life is far richer than it would have been.
So, keep learning. Don't decry your past learning - you are a student all your life.
"Cats like plain crisps"
The "Secret" to raising smart kids is to instill in them a work ethic.
You know, every person I've ever known professionally who used the term "work ethic" was so into monitoring what other people were doing that they got lost in a fit of cynical self despair. True story:
"Worker#1" was always on time, worked a full shift, clocked in and out, and produced mediocre work.
"Worker#2" was frequently late, goofed off at work occasionally, forgot to clock in or out, and produced outstanding work.
Worker#1 said to me "I don't know why you allow Worker#2 to goof off - I work much harder than he does and am always on time.
I replied "He gets his work done on time, and I wouldn't come down on you if you decided to goof off occasionally or arrive late."
The reply was "I wouldn't do that, because I have a work ethic!"
What Worker#1 failed to recognize was that it was the results that mattered, not how hard you believed yourself to be working. It's not just that - in "creative" industries (web development, in this case), goofing off is vitally important. Creativity can't be forced, and it's been my experience that the brain needs to rest to be able to foster creativity properly. Spending your "down" time mentally criticizing your fellow employees and obsessing over "work ethic" just makes you unhappy.
My wife and I have decided we're going to home school. Researching this, we've found that studies show that children that are home school are statistically better socialized. Are there plenty of cases that we can all think of where parents home school just to shelter their children? Sure, but overall, people that enter home schooling with the right attitude about engaging children with people outside the home have children that are better off. First off, much of the time spent in school isn't spent socializing, it's spent sitting quietly a few feet from friends, whom you aren't allowed to talk to for most of the day. With one day a week around other home school students plus a few activities, a student can get the same amount of socialization that the institution taught student gets in a whole week.
Plus we have the opportunity to have our students go and experience the things they want to learn first hand from some place, and interact with adults. We also remove them from an atmosphere where many students punish their peers for success, and where bullying is prevalent by underachievers against achievers.
But the real reason we've decided to home school is that by every metric that yields success in school, home schooling is better than institution schooling. Those things that really seem to matter are parent interest and participation and student to teacher ratio. Even when home schooling multiple children at a time, the parent does most of the instruction in a one-on-one or a one-on-two basis, and most of the learning comes from reading material that could have been assigned in the school and done at home, or in lab activities. Home school children have a much higher self motivation to learn in a home school situation, because the class moves at their speed, and is best taught tailored to their interests.
I partially disagree. While this is the situation for many college students, there actually are quite a few opportunities out there, both paid and unpaid, that can advance students in their field of study significantly.
How many of these students actually consult with their career services departments (and I mean hunt them down) to gather internship opportunities? How many students get out there and network with working professionals (save workshops and stuff) to extend their contact pool? How many students waste an incredible amount of time partying, drinking and living the high life?
Example: I was in the bathroom taking care of business, and I overheard two seniors talking about vacation. One of them had the option of either landing an internship or taking off the entire summer, flying to Vegas and just "chillin'." He decided to chill for the summer, and explicitly rely on his parents to come both the vacation and any outstanding loans and such.
Now, to give benefit of the doubt, he could have been in school for three summers, or was already working really hard and needed a break. However, something tells me that neither of those were the case.
This is one example out of many. To say that college kids can do "nothing" to expand their opportunities is horribly one-sided.
I would argue that the internet would be far, far, far more of a destructive way to socialize someone than any public school.
My evidence: furries, livejournal, facebook, 4chan, 2girls1cup, tubgirl, and goatse.