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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 an all-natural drug-free solution to ADD that worked just fine for generations. Then these god damn pot smoking hippies come along and think they know better and we end up with a generation of tubby little fuckers with an attitude of entitlement. And what's that preparing them for? It isn't fucking rainbows and daisies out there, people! The world is a cold and uncaring place and if you don't work to secure your future you're going to end up being harvested for organs! By the Chinese! Not that the current crop is good for much else.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
Getting straight A's and B's has always been optional. C's are a passing grade; why do any better if you don't have any real motivation to?
if we know that all "C" students are really just "A" students who haven't been sufficiently greased to do the required work, then what's the motivation of society to make that happen? are the children any more useful to society because they completed more busy work in elementary school to get a few extra gold stars to increase their letter grade?
how about this: if every student gets an A, then everyone gets an equal share of the money... if anyone doesn't get an A, then no one gets any money and it is refunded to tax payers.
it's not a job. 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.
so you think the world is fair?
a child who is paid for letter grades in school, by the school, and does not produce is not punished in any way.
i'd much rather see a system that kept an account for all children that wasn't paid until graduation, and if you ever received a D the money in the account was cut by half. if you ever received an F the money was wiped out, and if you ever got a C, you wouldn't receive any new money for that grading cycle.
in my opinion, they have all admitted failure by requiring an outside source for motivation. i expect rampant cheating and teachers taking cuts of the bonuses in exchange for higher grades.
of course crack dealers don't make a lot of money. how many crack heads do you know?
so what's your point? it's reasonable that society expects things, so that means they should be forced to pay extra for it, or shouldn't be forced to pay extra for it?
That will simply end badly.
so then we can agree that any system that infuses money into the equation of education will also end badly.
I know many people, including relatives of mine, who are on it. I'm very much aware of how it works, which is why I'm very against it. Perhaps you should actually meet someone on welfare, then you would realize that the overwhelming majority of them are people who just don't want to work and think those of us who do work are idiots for not just getting on welfare.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson