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."

Comments

Re:a better question

[causality]

well, this is all being done in the name of saving money. that is the problem, especially considering it's a fiat currency.

betterment should never be defined in getting the same for less relative to a fiat currency.

Unfortunately, you are going to discover (and may have already) that most people just don't understand the full implications of our financial system. They either don't understand that fiat currency with fractional reserve banking can do nothing other than perpetually increase debt, or they know this only intellectually, like a memorized fact which they can parrot without true understanding and appreciation for its full implications.

Most people don't know these things, have not done the research themselves, do not know the history (of Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis) that brought us this system, and don't appreciate what happens when there is a tremendous amount of debt that someone must end up holding. For one thing, they think the dollar in their pocket represents wealth. They don't understand that if every last debt were paid off, there would be zero money in circulation, though this can't happen because there is more debt than dollars in circulation. That's much of the "national debt" that the news media keeps talking about without actually defining.

There's little appreciation for the fact that this is not an accident caused by bumbling idiots, but a massive fraud perpetrated by people who knew what they were doing and designed it very carefully. It's not like the public schools consider it an important priority to educate people on this matter. Unfortunately most people will never make any real effort to educate themselves. They think that's a burden, not an honor and a privilege. That, above all else, is why the status quo perpetuates. We've lost our initiative and have become passive spectators waiting for someone, like the schools and colleges, to tell us what we need to know.

I for one greatly appreciate what you are saying. I regret that many will not, for all of this should be common knowledge.