Slashdot Mirror
Should Kids Be Bribed To Do Well In School?
theodp writes "Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. did something education researchers almost never do: he ran a randomized experiment in hundreds of classrooms in Chicago, Dallas, Washington, and New York to help answer a controversial question: Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School? He used mostly private money to pay 18,000 kids a total of $6.3 million and brought in a team of researchers to help him analyze the effects. He got death threats, but he carried on. His findings? If incentives are designed wisely, it appears, payments can indeed boost kids' performance as much as or more than many other reforms you've heard about before — and for a fraction of the cost."
It's how we motivate adults at work so why not kids in school?
If it turns out to be a better use of resources and we turn out students who do better in school then it can't be all bad.
What does that teach them? Don't do anything regardless of what it is unless you're "bribed".
That said I know I will get flamed for saying that, but I think it instills an attitude of don't anything unless you get paid, loses touch with what education is and should be.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
So the children of rich parents should do better in school than those of poor parents? Purely because they have more money?
I'm not advocating one way or another, but it's the first question that popped in to my mind when I read your post.
I can see two main arguments for this and one against.
(+) "If it works, then why not?"
(+) "It's capitalism, comrade!"
(-) "But it's against our ideals, people should learn for the sake of learning!"
Frankly, I'm up for anything which improves the effectiveness of our education system at this point as long as it doesn't constitute an outright human rights violation. The system is broken. If you can prove that X provides significant gains, then we should at least look into it.
The experiments so far indicate that paying students for results improves only the results paid for. Pay for attendance, you get attendance. Pay for grades on quizzes, you get grades on quizzes. End of year scores don't improve much, if at all. And when the money stops, so does the improvement.
That's useful info.
While I generally feel the government shouldn't be in charge of raising our kids, they ARE in charge of educating them (if your kids go to public school).
Also, unlike so many other government programs and tax breaks, this actually helps out poor families more than rich families. If little Delray can make money by studying, he's less likely to go "hang" with a bad crowd and steal money. He even has a chance to help provide himself with a better life now AND later.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
http://outcampaign.org/
Our current education system is failing. Its very evident by looking at any national ranking charts that compare countries. We need to do something before things crash. And believe me, when it crashes it will affect YOU. Crime, the economy, poverty, health care. What wouldn't be fair would be you reaping the benefits of education without paying for it. Public education (yes, even the crappy system we have now) helps EVERYONE, those without children, those with children in private school, the elderly who's children have already finished school, EVERYONE.
Well I don't get up every morning and say
"Right, unless somebody's going to pay me, I'm not having breakfast!"
Do you?
It's a job; you get paid if you accomplish what you're told to do. You don't get grounded if you fail to perform, you just stop getting money.
Dilbert RSS feed
Studies show that adding pay to a task decreases the internal perceived motivation for that same task. Actors conclud, subconsciously, that money is why they did it. Hence they are less likely in the future to do it unless they are paid again. Perilous to do this with the pursuit of knowledge.
Of course in a typical public school, there are already serious problems with busywork versus genuine pursuit of understanding. In that context, payment might be the right thing to do, because as others have noted, payment is indeed what humans expect in exchange for busy work.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
f their parents aren't expected to be capable of motivating their children, then why should society be expected to be capable of doing it?
i don't want to pay children to do what they are expected to do, when they aren't penalized in the same form for not doing it.
Move away from the emotional aspects of it and consider it this way:
Let's start with the premise that you want to see our schools do a better job educating our kids.
You have proposal A, with a cost of X and an effectiveness of Y .7Y
You have proposal B, with a cost of 2X and an effectiveness of
So long as it's not something inappropriate for children, is there any reason not to pick proposal A?
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
...do you understand how much money can be made stealing, or the more lucrative drug dealing?
Yes, do you? Read the chapter of Freakonomics entitled "Why Do Drug Dealers Live With their Parents". It has some good numbers to show making more than minimum wage working as a crack dealer is sort of like playing basketball for a living... that is to say, you can make a lot of money, but any individual almost certainly won't.
but the effectiveness is never clearly defined. what is stopping teachers from giving all students an A as long as they cut them in on the bonus money?
You can't choose your parents, that's why civillised countries provide free education for children, free (or subsidised) medical care and a small amount of money for food and clothes if the families are very poor.
Parents have a great responsibility to their children, but as we all know, many irresponsible and incapable people have children.
Stick Men
A job is better than prison which is the closest analog to the current school system.
Students are expected to work extremely hard for an extremely long time with no short term payoff(indeed with short term penalties) and the only possible payoff being far enough off that the time could be measured in significant fractions of their entire lifespan so far.
Some kids manage this.
Many don't and that's a failing of the system and not just the individual.
the free availability should be motivation enough. it was for me.
I think the projection of self onto the societal-level of decision making gives us policy that only works for a few people. This is especially the case when you apply yourself as (presumably) an adult as a decent model for today's children. Their situation is invariably different from yours and using your own childhood as a model for a wide swath of today's youth is probably not going to match up to the needs and expectations of today.
It isn't hard, it just costs money (which apparently they're willing to throw at this problem anyway, so...), which most schools don't have enough of. On top of that, traditional thinking in education also keeps good ideas down. I've seen effective teaching methods used in various places, usually only by single teachers, or by specialty schools that cost more or aren't publicly funded. And these techniques are widely dispersed, since education is typically governed on the local level, so they see little propagation. If we could gather up these techniques, consolidate them, pay to put them into all schools and universities (for training teachers to use them), then you'd see a world of difference in how well kids did in school (and life). Intrinsic motivators can be fostered if done right, but our whole societal paradigm revolves around extrinsic rewards and punishments, so these ideas have a hard time propagating. I won't even get into the bad influence that most parents have on this effect, but that can be at least partly countered by proper education, which would only increase over generations.
And how about the curriculum itself? How many times have I seen on /. that many people here agree that teaching things like logic and philosophy would be beneficial? I'd add to that communication skills (how many problems in our society begin with misunderstandings and people not being clear, or not listening properly?), and emotional strategies like anger and stress management. There are good ideas out there that can help everyone, and should be part of everyone's "basic training" growing up, but they generally only get taught in specialty classes or by therapists long after problems develop.
You can also look at it like perfectly standard problem-solving: do you find the root of the problem, and solve it there, or simply apply band-aid solutions such as this one, fixing the symptoms only and leaving the core problem in place? This is like trying to cure the measles by covering up each individual spot as they appear.
Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know. - M. King Hubbert
Present your argument in formal logic, then. I'll take your side if it's sound :).
It's easy to say "should".
They real question is what gets the best results.
Your argument seems to be based entirely on your own ego.
As the guy in TFA put it.
"Kids should learn for the love of learning,"
"But they're not. So what shall we do?"
"someone else provides the children with food and a home. those providers have expectations of the children. no further motivation should be expected, let alone required."
You've just described slavery. The master provides food and a home to his slaves, and that provider has expectation of the slaves. No further motivation should be expected, let alone required.
Society has moved away from the slavery-model for our financial system. Perhaps we should move away from the slavery-model for our educational system as well.
it was for me.
And thus the entire problem with trying to inject rational and evidence based thinking into the system is summed up perfectly.
The people who do well are the people who succeed in the current system.
The people people who succeeded in the current system no matter how poor the current system is believe that only they and people like them ever *should* succeed or do well.
and so we see clouds of vitriol like the above.
what the hell?
This program is an evidence based experiment.
That's not ignorance.
Ignorance is throwing round rhetoric about how you think the world should and shouldn't be based on nothing but your own self importance.
How does that describe slavery any more than most jobs?
"Someone else provides the workers money (which buys the food and home). Those providers have expectations of the workers. No further motivations should be expected let alone required."
You are right (except for the dangerous part). perhaps someone should do a study on it. Hey wait, that's what started your whole rant in the first place.
What?! You mean we can stop worshiping people that can hit/catch/throw balls? We should stop caring about far removed people who are famous for pretending to be other people? What a mad idea! Next you'll be telling us that war kills people, there is no god, and men watch porn. It'll lead to mass chaos!
Yes, I'm a proud Ahmurkin
SSC
the long term effects of paying children money for marks in school is not clear, and in many ways seemingly dangerous.
The compensation is deferred, but we already do pay students to do well in school. I had a full ride plus in college; that was a direct result of doing well in high school. I am a physician now, and the very good income I make is only available to people who did very well in school. "Study hard and you'll get a scholarship to college and a good job afterward" may be a lot more indirect than "Here's some cash, kid" but it pretty much only tested whether I was able to handle delayed gratification - otherwise it was very much paying me for doing well in school. This proposes to push that payment scheme down to kids who can't do decades-long delayed gratification, i.e. most of them., in order to improve their outcomes from education.
I don't think that's the case. Money is not an end in itself, it's a form of delayed gratification. It's not bad, but it doesn't trump all other kinds of motivation. When these other motivations apply, the money factor becomes irrelevant, and can be the source of serious mistakes in understanding.
Food, sex, etc. are stronger motivators than money for most people.
Do you know what these intrinsic motivators are?
I'll tell you:
1. Thirst.
2. Hunger.
3. Fear (of death, of pain...)
4. Sex drive.
and much much further than this is
X. Curiosity.
In most people natural curiosity does not lie within the defined boundaries of what is required from them at schools.
Most schools and most classes do not promote curiosity and most people cannot be curious about most things that are required from them at school.
How do you suggest making everyone have the same intrinsic motivators to do some insane work defined by some insane curriculum, most of which is really only directed at creating an obedient working unit and like it?
You can't handle the truth.
...so you think the world is fair?
Of course not, but it is our duty as humans to make it as fair as we can and certainly if you don't care about fairness why should we care what you think is fair with regard to your taxes? You can't bitch and moan about how you don't think said taxation is fair and expect anyone to listen if you ignore the unfair things said taxation is addressing.
Who knew that sufficiently motivated kids could get good grades? What a stunner. It's absolutely mind boggling.
All this study does is point out the obvious. What it doesn't do is show how to teach students how to find reasons within themselves for getting good grades. As lack of self-motivation is the real problem standing between most kids and realizing their personal potential(both grade-wise and in life) that's where the studies should focus.
I remember Algebra class in high school. It wasn't all that hard, but I hated it as no one ever told me what it was good for, and I couldn't visualize any use for it. I ended up dropping it because I would have gotten a D in it, while I pulled straight A's in Geometry with hardly any effort on my part. The difference? My interest level. My internal motivation. I loved pulling out my Geometry book and going to Geometry class. I hated pulling out my Algebra book and going to Algebra class, even though I liked the teacher.
A decade later I entered a college technical course which required algebra skills for the electrical theory it taught. I aced both math and electrical courses as I finally finally saw what algebra was used for, and became motivated as I found electrical theory fascinating.
In my late 40s I went back to school again and aced math classes related to electronics that the college said I had no business even taking with my math background. Those classes combined algebra and trig, which I'd never studied at any level in school, but yet I breezed through them with minimal effort. My total exposure to trig before those classes? A small, and I mean small, trig textbook written in the late 1800s. It was approximately 4"x6" and about.5" thick, including the hard cover that I had spent maybe 4 or 5 hours total reading, but it made sense to me
We need to study how to motivate, how to get kids to understand how the skills taught in school will affect their life after school. Once they understand those things they will apply themselves as it's in their own best interest and they will recognize it. They aren't stupid, they're just taught more about political correctness, and that the world owes them, in school these days than they are about real life, how they can succeed, and what that success will mean to them in quality of life after school.
This study shows short-term motivation works. But what we really need is to understand how to encourage long-term motivation in our kids. Teaching them that they are entitled to the government taking care of them from the cradle to the grave isn't motivational in the least. It's demotivational, if that's actually a word. It teaches them that they can get by with the least effort possible, and that's a recipe for disaster-in-the-making for our country's long-term future. Why? If our kids aren't self-motivated to succeed, our country will fail right along with them.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Yes, thanks for that post. The use of the word "bribe" seems calculated to imply that paying kids for their performance in school is somehow sleazy or immoral, which is absurd given that almost everyone pushing this viewpoint expects payment for their performance at work. The idea that good grades should be their own reward sounds fine and noble, but it has no connection to reality, and most kids figure this out pretty fast.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
should these questions be left to be answered and executed in private by the parents of kids?
yes.
This is currently at "-1 Flamebait". What a failure of moderation. The question posed by this summary is "Should kids be bribed to do well in school?" The post to which I reply states an opinion that the parents should be the ones who decide whether this is the best way to raise their children. That's flamebait? Really??
An instant, dismissive attempt to censor what is obviously a valid, honest opinion only lends credibility to that opinion. So good job, mods. Your childish reaction to this tells me only one thing: that a person who is not so puerile and emotionally overreactive views this differently than you do. Anyone with some understanding who might have entertained the idea of both views being merely different but equal now knows that yours is inferior. Anyone who can't see that for themselves would have already agreed with you anyway, so you truly have wasted your time and your mod points.
As I've heard it said, you might chronologically be an adult but that doesn't mean you've grown up. If you want to try growing up a little, perhaps instead of wasting mod points you can explain why parents should not be the ones who ultimately decide these matters.
Incidentally, I have plenty of karma. Do your worst. Waste your points on me. I'd be happy with that, since you might have otherwised use them to censor someone who doesn't have plenty of karma. I'd suggest "Offtopic" but feel free to be creative.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Jocks have always been a PITA for everyone that was *not* at Jock themselves. That said however, Jocks are nothing more than geeks of the human body.
Funny that computer geeks have no problem programming and performing other advanced mental tasks, yet inflict serious damage and neglect the health of their own body. Try using those brains to drop the weight and improve your cardio. If the Jocks can do it, no reason you can't too.
Life is not for the lazy.
Parents' belief that they know what's best for their children is usually egotism.
What's our responsibility when they're clearly wrong? (i.e. the vaccination-autism conspiracy theorists)
To protect parental rights? To protect the children themselves? To protect the rest of us?
Determine the goal before you look for a solution and you're more likely to find it.
What in the hell is wrong with this world when people get death threats over an issue like this?
What's wrong is that some people are too entrenched in thinking they are right.
When you are absolutely, 100%, certain that you are right, and you think someone is doing harm to children. Well, since you are absolutely right, then of course that guy is really doing harm to children.
Well then, if someone is going to harm children, and will not stop when you tell them do, sending out death threats is not such a big deal, since you are "saving the children" right?
In my opinion, the greatest evil can only be done by those who completely has no concept of right or wrong, OR those who 100% convinced they are doing such greater good than any small evil done in the process could be justified.
Oliver.
Funny that computer geeks have no problem programming and performing other advanced mental tasks, yet inflict serious damage and neglect the health of their own body. Try using those brains to drop the weight and improve your cardio. If the Jocks can do it, no reason you can't too.
Exactly!
And if computer geeks have no problem programming and performing other advanced mental tasks, no reason jocks can't do it too!
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Music is good for more than just entertainment. It can be used to engender in people a feeling of beauty or the sublime. It can be used to train and teach people, make them better people. It can be used for relaxation, a sleeping aid, meditation, or even an aphrodisiac. Heck, it can even be used for subliminal messaging.