At the same time, as I said it might well raise the curve as a whole, but at the cost of being an unequal incentive. That would still justify it in my opinion, because the realistic purpose of education policy isn't to produce educational equality (though that might be the stated goal), but to educate the whole as best as possible.
Basically my attitude as well.
This is just one program. If every suggestion has to simultaneously solve every problem in education nothing gets done. I say take it for what it is worth and keep looking at other solutions also to fix other problems.
*You would think that the primary concern for most teachers is the advancement of their students. You couldn't be more wrong.
Okay, man, as a social science education major, I say fuck you. If students are making more money than the teachers, why teach in the first place? Also, I will care about the advancement of my students. The reason that I'm becoming a teacher is not to make money, it's to help people.
-EDIT-
About the topic, I think that people need to value knowledge, and the idea of paying someone to learn just seems a little spoiled and unnecessary.
Buddy Lee on
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There seems to be a lot of opportunity in here to game the system. I can see things like industrious and semi-scrupulous smart kids doing the homework of the lazy/dumb folks so they can split the cash rewards.
I just see a lot of problems, here. A for ingenuity, though.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
*You would think that the primary concern for most teachers is the advancement of their students. You couldn't be more wrong.
Okay, man, as a social science education major, I say fuck you. If students are making more money than the teachers, why teach in the first place? Also, I will care about the advancement of my students. The reason that I'm becoming a teacher is not to make money, it's to help people.
-EDIT-
About the topic, I think that people need to value knowledge, and the idea of paying someone to learn just seems a little spoiled and unnecessary.
Yeah, well I think that people should value useful work, and the idea of paying them to do it is spoiled.
But I think we know from experience that wishful ideologies with utopian shades like that don't pan out.
The EMA here pays students for turning up to so many lessons. Obviously you can't guarantee they will work as hard as they should, but at least it gets them in the classroom, exposed to learning.
Plutocracy on
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
I remember in 6th grade when I got an F in Reading. My mother went ballistic on that teacher. I can only imagine what would've happened if money was involved.
How about this for an argument against it? The price of drugs will *skyrocket.*
When I was in 6th grade, the hardest work I did was selling candy bars to get a Nerf Whistler football.
Grades 1-3, I studied to get Star Wars toys at report card time - though those were from my parents, not the school.
So I'd just change money to toys. I doubt parents would be stealing from their kids or berating teachers over an Eyeclops Bionic Eye (no idea what that is, but Amazon says it was the hottest toy of 2007). I doubt drug dealers take them, either.
If I had to make a list of the top 20 things that could fix the education system, this would not be on it. It's not the worst idea in the world, but we have much larger fish to fry that could make a huge amount of difference in the quality of education (NCLB).
Plus I'm pretty sure the teachers would riot when they realize that their students are collectively making more than they are*. Also, when you reward kids to do something, like.. giving them money to play video games, and then you take away that reward, they cut back on playing video games to a shocking degree. This is why electrician's houses are always not wired quite right.
I'd like to see it happen, maybe even in a small setting, just to see the results. Low income children tend to do worse because the parents don't help them out at home, and if the child was bringing home a little paycheck, they may give them some more attention. Which sounds really fucked up and awful, but if it works, who cares.
*You would think that the primary concern for most teachers is the advancement of their students. You couldn't be more wrong.
Yeah, I'm sure teachers just work to get paid a large amount of money.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Teachers are one of the lowest paid state groups. It's amazing that they even do their job at all.
The average teacher makes nearly as much as a police officer or nurse, while working a lot less hours. If they want to earn more money, there are almost always opportunities like tutoring or teaching summer school.
I it's a bad idea to pay kids to do their schoolwork, if for no other reason than I don't want to pay extra taxes for the program every year. While these kids might get some extra money during school, they'll be paying it back via taxes when they're older.
I want to pay more taxes for public education, if it means that students will pay more attention and try harder.
Honestly I feel like we need something to change in education... and not just setting No Child Left Behind on fire and pretending it never happened.
I don't even have any kids, but I believe that some things are worth paying for. Education is the keystone of a First World nation, and we've been falling behind our contemporaries for some time now.
I want to pay more taxes for public education, if it means that students will pay more attention and try harder.
I don't want to pay another goddamned dime for education until someone cobbles up a suitable explanation for how they're going to make that dime do something useful in a way the past hundred million dimes haven't. As lousy as NCLB wound up being, it at least had the advantage of being an actual plan. I don't want to just spackle over the holes in our education system with a wad of twenties and a tub of industrial-strength wishful thinking.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
If I had to make a list of the top 20 things that could fix the education system, this would not be on it. It's not the worst idea in the world, but we have much larger fish to fry that could make a huge amount of difference in the quality of education (NCLB).
Plus I'm pretty sure the teachers would riot when they realize that their students are collectively making more than they are*. Also, when you reward kids to do something, like.. giving them money to play video games, and then you take away that reward, they cut back on playing video games to a shocking degree. This is why electrician's houses are always not wired quite right.
I'd like to see it happen, maybe even in a small setting, just to see the results. Low income children tend to do worse because the parents don't help them out at home, and if the child was bringing home a little paycheck, they may give them some more attention. Which sounds really fucked up and awful, but if it works, who cares.
*You would think that the primary concern for most teachers is the advancement of their students. You couldn't be more wrong.
Yeah, I'm sure teachers just work to get paid a large amount of money.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Teachers are one of the lowest paid state groups. It's amazing that they even do their job at all.
The average teacher makes nearly as much as a police officer or nurse, while working a lot less hours. If they want to earn more money, there are almost always opportunities like tutoring or teaching summer school.
I it's a bad idea to pay kids to do their schoolwork, if for no other reason than I don't want to pay extra taxes for the program every year. While these kids might get some extra money during school, they'll be paying it back via taxes when they're older.
Maybe that's why we have a fucking problem with police and teachers. There is a shortage of both and a high burnout / turnaround rate. We offer many programs and incentives to get nurses, and we should be doing the same for teachers. I will never understand the idiotic hatred towards teachers. Those underpaid, disgruntled people are responsible for imparting wisdom and knowledge to your spoiled little brat that just wont shut the fuck up about his new ipod and how much money daddy makes at the dealership. :x
I'd be more willing to support a similar system that provided incentives to students who go above and beyond what is required of them in their coursework in order to not only learn the material, but also apply it.
Let's reward curiosity and initiative, rather than simply following instructions.
The problem with education today is our society. Put simply, we're dumb, and damn proud of it. As long at the mile-wide streak of anti-intellectualism remains in our society, we're going to have issues with schools.
The problem with education today is our society. Put simply, we're dumb, and damn proud of it. As long at the mile-wide streak of anti-intellectualism remains in our society, we're going to have issues with schools.
In other words, as long as there are no immediate incentives on learning to counter-act prevalent and immediately felt cultural dis-incentives felt by children, we're going to have issues with children choosing not to studiously pursue an education.
...
Oh look, a thread about a way to provide incentives!
There seems to be a lot of opportunity in here to game the system. I can see things like industrious and semi-scrupulous smart kids doing the homework of the lazy/dumb folks so they can split the cash rewards.
I just see a lot of problems, here. A for ingenuity, though.
Worse - poor families sweatshopping kids for money, putting extra pressure on them to succeed. And what about those kids for whom $50 isn't worth a second glance? Wouldn't they devalue the system? Also, you seem pretty keen on the idea of it stopping smart kids from being bullied, but wouldn't it encourage smart kids to bully dumb kids, which is all the more insidious? Wouldn't it just bring social class problems into the classroom?
And what about marking moderation? No longer can you have teachers using discretionary marking (insofar as the system still does). That means more standardised tests, which means more teaching to the test, which means a narrower education sending the message "money is the goal", and not the pursuit of knowledge or personal betterment.
You won't have kids sitting in the library discovering Ursula le Guin, because education won't be about exploring knowledge any more. Learning isn't about grinding away for cash prizes. It's about freedom, empowerment, and the fundamental human right to better one's self through knowledge. We have to balance that side of the equation with the social benefits of smarter kids.
EDIT: Which is I guess my way of saying that any problems with the current education system can be solved only through one method - better teachers. You start raising the prestige of teaching as a profession, providing better pay, luring smarter, better trained individuals, then you'll see the improvements. Splashing $50 notes around isn't going to cure the deep rot.
Zsetrek on
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
edited January 2008
So what happens when the kids hit 16 years old and realize that their hard work at school for 40 hours a week is equivalent to working about six hours at the local movie theatre?
I dunno - maybe it's a good idea, but maybe it poisons the draw of education by conflating it with money.
Worse - poor families sweatshopping kids for money, putting extra pressure on them to succeed.
Given how little pressure is currently placed on many children to succeed, this hardly seems to be the kind of grim, dystopian outcome we need to avoid. The cultural groups stereotypically associated with academic achievement ended up with those stereotypes because they put a lot of pressure on their kids to achieve, and kids actually live up the expectations placed upon them.
Besides, if a family is so poor that they need to turn to income from their children to make ends meet, there's nothing stopping them from doing so already, as many do. If the kid can help his family by studying hard instead of pulling all-nighters at McD's, so much the better.
And what about those kids for whom $50 isn't worth a second glance?
What of them? Must this system motivate everyone to be worthwhile, or is it enough to motivate those who are comparatively poor and statistically least likely to do well in school?
Also, you seem pretty keen on the idea of it stopping smart kids from being bullied, but wouldn't it encourage smart kids to bully dumb kids, which is all the more insidious? Wouldn't it just bring social class problems into the classroom?
I think, as a society, we might weather the horrors of social pressure to succeed rather better than the current situations in which we punish displays of intellectualism.
You won't have kids sitting in the library discovering Ursula le Guin, because education won't be about exploring knowledge any more. Learning isn't about grinding away for cash prizes. It's about freedom, empowerment, and the fundamental human right to better one's self through knowledge. We have to balance that side of the equation with the social benefits of smarter kids.
Knowledge for its own sake has never sold as well as knowledge for the sake of cash money. Thus has it ever been.
So what happens when the kids hit 16 years old and realize that their hard work at school for 40 hours a week is equivalent to working about six hours at the local movie theatre?
I dunno - maybe it's a good idea, but maybe it poisons the draw of education by conflating it with money.
Troo.
But this is a fairly common problem in society that they should probably get used to. If any of them become soldiers, they might well ask why they're getting $30,000 salary a year for risking their lives (current £ exchange for UK) when some fat banker cunt gets $100,000+ in bonuses for risking other peoples' money.
@Zsetrek - I think that view suffers from a deranged level of exageration.
1. Wow, parents putting pressure on kids to do well academically. Horror.
2. No, I don't think rich kids not caring about the money does devalue the system. Statistically they tend to do pretty well anyway. For the 90% of kids whose parents aren't already throwing hundreds of dollars a week at them in spending money I think it is a decent incentive though.
3. I'm not particularly concerned about bullying. I think the remedies for bullying under our current or any other system lay outside the sphere of student incentives.
4. I'm not sure exactly why teachers would not be able to use discretionary marking. I'm sure you do have some reason why it is absolutely inevitable, but honestly your view is already so pitch black on the matter that I doubt your judgement.
5. I don't think a modest cash incentive really produces such a big effect. I mean, if we were to take a similarly dim view of other means of motivation what would we see? "O man, teachers praising students just teaches them to be pliant to authority figures!" Oh come on.
6. Your point about Ursula le Guin is bizzare. Her books were never assigned to me in school and though I read all of them in my late teenage years I didn't read any of them because I had been cultivated with some raging ideal of the educated life anyway. What is the argument here? That people will have an attitude of only reading when they are being paid to do it? Because I'm pretty sure that none of us on this forum were shaped in such a way by the current system of incentives and disincentives used in educational programs. No one here picks up a Terry Pratchett book because they are hoping to get affirmation from an authority figure, or praise from their parents upon the receipt of a letter grade or a scholarship to a college education program. Therefore I disagree with the idea that the regime of incentives used in school has such a pervasive effect.
So what happens when the kids hit 16 years old and realize that their hard work at school for 40 hours a week is equivalent to working about six hours at the local movie theatre?
Er, what happens right now when he realizes that his hard work at school 40 a week is equivalent to working 0 hours at the local movie theatre?
So what happens when the kids hit 16 years old and realize that their hard work at school for 40 hours a week is equivalent to working about six hours at the local movie theatre?
Well, I'm sure they will all drop out of high school to work at the movie theater of course.
I dunno - maybe it's a good idea, but maybe it poisons the draw of education by conflating it with money.
Maybe it gives students who are not otherwise interested the motivation to open their eyes to what education offers, and merely gives students who were already motivated extra pocket money and social standing.
In any case - public education exists to educate people who will likely spend the bulk of their lives working every day for money, not some aristocratic class of philosopher kings.
So what happens when the kids hit 16 years old and realize that their hard work at school for 40 hours a week is equivalent to working about six hours at the local movie theatre?
Er, what happens right now when he realizes that his hard work at school 40 a week is equivalent to working 0 hours at the local movie theatre?
Well yeah but at present, the value of primary education isn't directly conflated with earning money. This might be a decent reward system but the focus of the purpose of education has to remain at some idealistic level to some extent unless we're really prepared to pay kids a competitive wage for attending school.
When I was in High School, local merchants would, like, give away ice cream cones or pizzas to kids who got good grades. It was a nice gesture, but I don't think that it really influenced kids one way or another. $50 per week would probably be a lot more effective.
You don't give the rich kids the monetary incentive to achieve in education because they don't need it. Means-test that shit.
No. The rules should be the same for everyone. There is no saying for certain that a child who is given everything in their life will not be motivated by the pride of earning something for themselves.
So what happens when the kids hit 16 years old and realize that their hard work at school for 40 hours a week is equivalent to working about six hours at the local movie theatre?
Well, I'm sure they will all drop out of high school to work at the movie theater of course.
I dunno - maybe it's a good idea, but maybe it poisons the draw of education by conflating it with money.
Maybe it gives students who are not otherwise interested the motivation to open their eyes to what education offers, and merely gives students who were already motivated extra pocket money and social standing.
In any case - public education exists to educate people who will likely spend the bulk of their lives working every day for money, not some aristocratic class of philosopher kings.
Which raises the question of why we're educating these kids in liberal arts for 12 years as opposed to giving them even the slightest of vocational skills.
So what happens when the kids hit 16 years old and realize that their hard work at school for 40 hours a week is equivalent to working about six hours at the local movie theatre?
Well, I'm sure they will all drop out of high school to work at the movie theater of course.
I dunno - maybe it's a good idea, but maybe it poisons the draw of education by conflating it with money.
Maybe it gives students who are not otherwise interested the motivation to open their eyes to what education offers, and merely gives students who were already motivated extra pocket money and social standing.
In any case - public education exists to educate people who will likely spend the bulk of their lives working every day for money, not some aristocratic class of philosopher kings.
Which raises the question of why we're educating these kids in liberal arts for 12 years as opposed to giving them even the slightest of vocational skills.
Because we value them as political citizens and fully developed humans.
None of which is somehow annihilated by a cash incentive. As I pointed out a moment ago, it isn't as though we worry about indoctrinating children with pervasive obedience to authority just because we have incentives and disincentives that they should follow a teacher's directions.
Shinto on
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
Well yeah but at present, the value of primary education isn't directly conflated with earning money.
Ha Ha.
You've been living in Cambridge too long.
"Now Jimmy make sure that you do well today in third grade so that you might work in the Mill someday"
The focus of American education really isn't strongly aligned with vocation. Especially primary education. I've been to your hippie high school, and while it seems like you got a pretty solid and interesting broad education, it didn't strike me as especially vocationally-directed.
Hell, even with secondary education, there's a general disconnect. Ask these kids on this message board who are getting their theatre or history or english or philosophy degrees what they're going to do with them, or alternatively why they're spending years of their lives and tens of thousands of dollars pursuing these degrees. I know that I did physics and math because I found the subjects challenging and beautiful and I was good at them, and kind of figured that there would probably be employment in it for me at some point after I finished.
Well yeah but at present, the value of primary education isn't directly conflated with earning money.
Ha Ha.
You've been living in Cambridge too long.
"Now Jimmy make sure that you do well today in third grade so that you might work in the Mill someday"
The focus of American education really isn't strongly aligned with vocation. Especially primary education. I've been to your hippie high school, and while it seems like you got a pretty solid and interesting broad education, it didn't strike me as especially vocationally-directed.
That's hilarious. Whatever my school was, it was a prep school with the subtext "THOU SHALT ATTEND COLLEGE AND BECOME SUCCESSFUL" inscribed on every moment of its instruction.
And in America, college comes with a strong assumption of subsequent economic success.
You could have dropped out of school and studied math and physics for free at a public library. Why didn't you? You wanted a diploma.
So what happens when the kids hit 16 years old and realize that their hard work at school for 40 hours a week is equivalent to working about six hours at the local movie theatre?
Er, what happens right now when he realizes that his hard work at school 40 a week is equivalent to working 0 hours at the local movie theatre?
Well yeah but at present, the value of primary education isn't directly conflated with earning money.
I'd rather strongly disagree. Rich people aren't scouting out the right pre-school to get their kids into the right elementary school to get to the right middle school to get to the right high school and right college so that their kids can best come to know knowledge for its own sake, nor are poorer families protesting the qualities of the schools in the neighborhoods because their children are being denied the experience of the Platonic Ideal of Educational Purity.
People want their kids to do well in school because people want their kids to get good jobs which presumably pay good money.
Knowledge for its own sake is not motivating a large section of society today, and it never really used to either. Tangible reward of one sort or another has always been a more powerful motivator. If you're motivated by some Aristotelian drive for truth, bully for you; I don't think this idea does any violence to the minority of people who are like you, but I think it's a step towards acknowledging the reality that money is a strong motivator for most people, and that many of those people are not currently being motivated by the system.
Senjutsu on
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
In any case - public education exists to educate people who will likely spend the bulk of their lives working every day for money, not some aristocratic class of philosopher kings.
Which raises the question of why we're educating these kids in liberal arts for 12 years as opposed to giving them even the slightest of vocational skills.
Because we value them as political citizens and fully developed humans.
None of which is somehow annihilated by a cash incentive. As I pointed out a moment ago, it isn't as though we worry about indoctrinating children with pervasive obedience to authority just because we have incentives and disincentives that they should follow a teacher's directions.
So we're educating them for the general purpose of them being philosopher kings (or, if you prefer, well-informed citizens and fully developed humans), but incenting them with money in order to prepare them for a lifetime of wage-slavery?
And yeah there are some schools, to some extent mine and probably yours, that are concerned about indoctrinating kids with a pervasive sense of obedience if not at the administrative level then certainly with certain teachers.
And anyways, I'm not being absolutist about this - I don't really think that it's a terrible idea, but I do think that it sends a mixed message which is somewhat contrary to the pervasive value we currently, as a society, place on education. You don't learn to read specifically so that you can get a job, but rather because reading is something that well-developed people can do, and it's viewed as its own reward.
You don't give the rich kids the monetary incentive to achieve in education because they don't need it. Means-test that shit.
No. The rules should be the same for everyone. There is no saying for certain that a child who is given everything in their life will not be motivated by the pride of earning something for themselves.
Oh I'm not saying that a kid from Eton is any less capable of believing in the wonder of education than a kid from your average secondary school. However the former isn't going to suddenly be convinced in the benefits of education after being given a small monetary incentive. The latter child on the other hand who has to go home to an estate property headed by a single-parent and share a small bedroom with five siblings is going to find an income from just going to school a revelation.
Plutocracy on
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Well, I'm not sure what society you grew up in Will. Because the one I grew up in had no such social consensus, and while many views were present if anything Senjutsu has described the majority view I experienced more closely than you have.
The problem with education today is our society. Put simply, we're dumb, and damn proud of it. As long at the mile-wide streak of anti-intellectualism remains in our society, we're going to have issues with schools.
In other words, as long as there are no immediate incentives on learning to counter-act prevalent and immediately felt cultural dis-incentives felt by children, we're going to have issues with children choosing not to studiously pursue an education.
...
Oh look, a thread about a way to provide incentives!
So, senj, do we keep throwing a fucking bandaid on the sucking chest wound? Or do we, you know, actually treat the fucking problem in the first place? Incentives are only a plaster - if we want to actually solve the problem, we need to attack it at the source! Sure, paying kids to learn will work somewhat - but not nearly as much as making "being smart" culturally acceptable.
You don't give the rich kids the monetary incentive to achieve in education because they don't need it. Means-test that shit.
No. The rules should be the same for everyone. There is no saying for certain that a child who is given everything in their life will not be motivated by the pride of earning something for themselves.
Oh I'm not saying that a kid from Eton is any less capable of believing in the wonder of education than a kid from your average secondary school. However the former isn't going to suddenly be convinced in the benefits of education after being given a small monetary incentive. The latter child on the other hand who has to go home to an estate property headed by a single-parent and share a small bedroom with five siblings is going to find an income from just going to school a revelation.
Arguments over your skepticism aside, I think that creating divisions within the student body in this way would create more opposition to such a program than support.
I mean, Jesus, you can't just give candy to some kids and not to others like that. It would be bedlam.
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
Well yeah but at present, the value of primary education isn't directly conflated with earning money.
Ha Ha.
You've been living in Cambridge too long.
"Now Jimmy make sure that you do well today in third grade so that you might work in the Mill someday"
The focus of American education really isn't strongly aligned with vocation. Especially primary education. I've been to your hippie high school, and while it seems like you got a pretty solid and interesting broad education, it didn't strike me as especially vocationally-directed.
That's hilarious. Whatever my school was, it was a prep school with the subtext "THOU SHALT ATTEND COLLEGE AND BECOME SUCCESSFUL" inscribed on every moment of its instruction.
And in America, college comes with a strong assumption of subsequent economic success.
You could have dropped out of school and studied math and physics for free at a public library. Why didn't you? You wanted a diploma.
I actually did this for a spell, and yes eventually went back for the diploma, much more-so out of personal expectations of "success" then out of the consciousness that I'd make more money. I don't think that I'm alone in having had an upbringing in which, yes, college was expected, but that the economic angle wasn't dwelled upon.
The problem with education today is our society. Put simply, we're dumb, and damn proud of it. As long at the mile-wide streak of anti-intellectualism remains in our society, we're going to have issues with schools.
In other words, as long as there are no immediate incentives on learning to counter-act prevalent and immediately felt cultural dis-incentives felt by children, we're going to have issues with children choosing not to studiously pursue an education.
...
Oh look, a thread about a way to provide incentives!
So, senj, do we keep throwing a fucking bandaid on the sucking chest wound? Or do we, you know, actually treat the fucking problem in the first place? Incentives are only a plaster - if we want to actually solve the problem, we need to attack it at the source! Sure, paying kids to learn will work somewhat - but not nearly as much as making "being smart" culturally acceptable.
The problem with education today is our society. Put simply, we're dumb, and damn proud of it. As long at the mile-wide streak of anti-intellectualism remains in our society, we're going to have issues with schools.
In other words, as long as there are no immediate incentives on learning to counter-act prevalent and immediately felt cultural dis-incentives felt by children, we're going to have issues with children choosing not to studiously pursue an education.
...
Oh look, a thread about a way to provide incentives!
So, senj, do we keep throwing a fucking bandaid on the sucking chest wound? Or do we, you know, actually treat the fucking problem in the first place? Incentives are only a plaster - if we want to actually solve the problem, we need to attack it at the source! Sure, paying kids to learn will work somewhat - but not nearly as much as making "being smart" culturally acceptable.
You cant just wave a wand and change cultural attitudes of acceptability; things become acceptable because they are done by or believed by the majority, or at least some sufficiently large minority or plurality.
So I think you're proposing going about things ass-backwards. The symptom-cause metaphor doesn't hold here; rather it's a question of attraction and critical mass. You provide incentives to gain attractiveness to move in the direction of critical mass.
Senjutsu on
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
Well, I'm not sure what society you grew up in Will. Because the one I grew up in had no such social consensus, and while many views were present if anything Senjutsu has described the majority view I experienced more closely than you have.
I grew up in a town in which pretty much every adult had a PhD in some difficult and lengthy but not especially renumerative field like Physics, Abstract Math, Chemistry, Astronomy or (at the time) Computer Science, and pretty much every adult earned the same upper-middle class salary within about 10% to 20% of each other.
I admit that this might have colored my view of education.
Still, it's hard to imagine that I'm that far off when I see so many college kids still pursuing the same soft-science and liberal-arts degrees that more or less guarantee difficulty in finding good employment.
Wish I still had my old psych textbook, but I distinctly remember a study in which one group of kids (around age 6) were allowed to color pictures, while another group was rewarded for doing so. The group that received rewards lost all interest in the activity if those rewards were no longer offered. The group that was never offered any additional incentive continued to find coloring interesting on its own merits.
Basically, if you offer external incentives for an activity, people deprecate the intrinsic rewards of that activity. I'm not saying that our present school system is a utopia of learning for learning's sake, but I would submit that offering students cash will make it that much harder to foster any kind of intellectual curiosity or interest.
I'd be more willing to support a similar system that provided incentives to students who go above and beyond what is required of them in their coursework in order to not only learn the material, but also apply it.
Let's reward curiosity and initiative, rather than simply following instructions.
Posts
Basically my attitude as well.
This is just one program. If every suggestion has to simultaneously solve every problem in education nothing gets done. I say take it for what it is worth and keep looking at other solutions also to fix other problems.
Okay, man, as a social science education major, I say fuck you. If students are making more money than the teachers, why teach in the first place? Also, I will care about the advancement of my students. The reason that I'm becoming a teacher is not to make money, it's to help people.
-EDIT-
About the topic, I think that people need to value knowledge, and the idea of paying someone to learn just seems a little spoiled and unnecessary.
http://fantasy.premierleague.com/my-leagues/
The join code for the CLASSIC league: 214755-65927
The join code for the HEAD-TO-HEAD league: 5294-3346
I just see a lot of problems, here. A for ingenuity, though.
Yeah, well I think that people should value useful work, and the idea of paying them to do it is spoiled.
But I think we know from experience that wishful ideologies with utopian shades like that don't pan out.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
When I was in 6th grade, the hardest work I did was selling candy bars to get a Nerf Whistler football.
Grades 1-3, I studied to get Star Wars toys at report card time - though those were from my parents, not the school.
So I'd just change money to toys. I doubt parents would be stealing from their kids or berating teachers over an Eyeclops Bionic Eye (no idea what that is, but Amazon says it was the hottest toy of 2007). I doubt drug dealers take them, either.
The average teacher makes nearly as much as a police officer or nurse, while working a lot less hours. If they want to earn more money, there are almost always opportunities like tutoring or teaching summer school.
I it's a bad idea to pay kids to do their schoolwork, if for no other reason than I don't want to pay extra taxes for the program every year. While these kids might get some extra money during school, they'll be paying it back via taxes when they're older.
Honestly I feel like we need something to change in education... and not just setting No Child Left Behind on fire and pretending it never happened.
I don't even have any kids, but I believe that some things are worth paying for. Education is the keystone of a First World nation, and we've been falling behind our contemporaries for some time now.
I don't want to pay another goddamned dime for education until someone cobbles up a suitable explanation for how they're going to make that dime do something useful in a way the past hundred million dimes haven't. As lousy as NCLB wound up being, it at least had the advantage of being an actual plan. I don't want to just spackle over the holes in our education system with a wad of twenties and a tub of industrial-strength wishful thinking.
Let's reward curiosity and initiative, rather than simply following instructions.
In other words, as long as there are no immediate incentives on learning to counter-act prevalent and immediately felt cultural dis-incentives felt by children, we're going to have issues with children choosing not to studiously pursue an education.
...
Oh look, a thread about a way to provide incentives!
Worse - poor families sweatshopping kids for money, putting extra pressure on them to succeed. And what about those kids for whom $50 isn't worth a second glance? Wouldn't they devalue the system? Also, you seem pretty keen on the idea of it stopping smart kids from being bullied, but wouldn't it encourage smart kids to bully dumb kids, which is all the more insidious? Wouldn't it just bring social class problems into the classroom?
And what about marking moderation? No longer can you have teachers using discretionary marking (insofar as the system still does). That means more standardised tests, which means more teaching to the test, which means a narrower education sending the message "money is the goal", and not the pursuit of knowledge or personal betterment.
You won't have kids sitting in the library discovering Ursula le Guin, because education won't be about exploring knowledge any more. Learning isn't about grinding away for cash prizes. It's about freedom, empowerment, and the fundamental human right to better one's self through knowledge. We have to balance that side of the equation with the social benefits of smarter kids.
EDIT: Which is I guess my way of saying that any problems with the current education system can be solved only through one method - better teachers. You start raising the prestige of teaching as a profession, providing better pay, luring smarter, better trained individuals, then you'll see the improvements. Splashing $50 notes around isn't going to cure the deep rot.
I dunno - maybe it's a good idea, but maybe it poisons the draw of education by conflating it with money.
Besides, if a family is so poor that they need to turn to income from their children to make ends meet, there's nothing stopping them from doing so already, as many do. If the kid can help his family by studying hard instead of pulling all-nighters at McD's, so much the better.
What of them? Must this system motivate everyone to be worthwhile, or is it enough to motivate those who are comparatively poor and statistically least likely to do well in school?
I think, as a society, we might weather the horrors of social pressure to succeed rather better than the current situations in which we punish displays of intellectualism.
Knowledge for its own sake has never sold as well as knowledge for the sake of cash money. Thus has it ever been.
Troo.
But this is a fairly common problem in society that they should probably get used to. If any of them become soldiers, they might well ask why they're getting $30,000 salary a year for risking their lives (current £ exchange for UK) when some fat banker cunt gets $100,000+ in bonuses for risking other peoples' money.
Vive la marché!
1. Wow, parents putting pressure on kids to do well academically. Horror.
2. No, I don't think rich kids not caring about the money does devalue the system. Statistically they tend to do pretty well anyway. For the 90% of kids whose parents aren't already throwing hundreds of dollars a week at them in spending money I think it is a decent incentive though.
3. I'm not particularly concerned about bullying. I think the remedies for bullying under our current or any other system lay outside the sphere of student incentives.
4. I'm not sure exactly why teachers would not be able to use discretionary marking. I'm sure you do have some reason why it is absolutely inevitable, but honestly your view is already so pitch black on the matter that I doubt your judgement.
5. I don't think a modest cash incentive really produces such a big effect. I mean, if we were to take a similarly dim view of other means of motivation what would we see? "O man, teachers praising students just teaches them to be pliant to authority figures!" Oh come on.
6. Your point about Ursula le Guin is bizzare. Her books were never assigned to me in school and though I read all of them in my late teenage years I didn't read any of them because I had been cultivated with some raging ideal of the educated life anyway. What is the argument here? That people will have an attitude of only reading when they are being paid to do it? Because I'm pretty sure that none of us on this forum were shaped in such a way by the current system of incentives and disincentives used in educational programs. No one here picks up a Terry Pratchett book because they are hoping to get affirmation from an authority figure, or praise from their parents upon the receipt of a letter grade or a scholarship to a college education program. Therefore I disagree with the idea that the regime of incentives used in school has such a pervasive effect.
Well, I'm sure they will all drop out of high school to work at the movie theater of course.
Maybe it gives students who are not otherwise interested the motivation to open their eyes to what education offers, and merely gives students who were already motivated extra pocket money and social standing.
In any case - public education exists to educate people who will likely spend the bulk of their lives working every day for money, not some aristocratic class of philosopher kings.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
When I was in High School, local merchants would, like, give away ice cream cones or pizzas to kids who got good grades. It was a nice gesture, but I don't think that it really influenced kids one way or another. $50 per week would probably be a lot more effective.
No. The rules should be the same for everyone. There is no saying for certain that a child who is given everything in their life will not be motivated by the pride of earning something for themselves.
Ha Ha.
You've been living in Cambridge too long.
Which raises the question of why we're educating these kids in liberal arts for 12 years as opposed to giving them even the slightest of vocational skills.
Because we value them as political citizens and fully developed humans.
None of which is somehow annihilated by a cash incentive. As I pointed out a moment ago, it isn't as though we worry about indoctrinating children with pervasive obedience to authority just because we have incentives and disincentives that they should follow a teacher's directions.
"Now Jimmy make sure that you do well today in third grade so that you might work in the Mill someday"
The focus of American education really isn't strongly aligned with vocation. Especially primary education. I've been to your hippie high school, and while it seems like you got a pretty solid and interesting broad education, it didn't strike me as especially vocationally-directed.
Hell, even with secondary education, there's a general disconnect. Ask these kids on this message board who are getting their theatre or history or english or philosophy degrees what they're going to do with them, or alternatively why they're spending years of their lives and tens of thousands of dollars pursuing these degrees. I know that I did physics and math because I found the subjects challenging and beautiful and I was good at them, and kind of figured that there would probably be employment in it for me at some point after I finished.
That's hilarious. Whatever my school was, it was a prep school with the subtext "THOU SHALT ATTEND COLLEGE AND BECOME SUCCESSFUL" inscribed on every moment of its instruction.
And in America, college comes with a strong assumption of subsequent economic success.
You could have dropped out of school and studied math and physics for free at a public library. Why didn't you? You wanted a diploma.
I'd rather strongly disagree. Rich people aren't scouting out the right pre-school to get their kids into the right elementary school to get to the right middle school to get to the right high school and right college so that their kids can best come to know knowledge for its own sake, nor are poorer families protesting the qualities of the schools in the neighborhoods because their children are being denied the experience of the Platonic Ideal of Educational Purity.
People want their kids to do well in school because people want their kids to get good jobs which presumably pay good money.
Knowledge for its own sake is not motivating a large section of society today, and it never really used to either. Tangible reward of one sort or another has always been a more powerful motivator. If you're motivated by some Aristotelian drive for truth, bully for you; I don't think this idea does any violence to the minority of people who are like you, but I think it's a step towards acknowledging the reality that money is a strong motivator for most people, and that many of those people are not currently being motivated by the system.
So we're educating them for the general purpose of them being philosopher kings (or, if you prefer, well-informed citizens and fully developed humans), but incenting them with money in order to prepare them for a lifetime of wage-slavery?
And yeah there are some schools, to some extent mine and probably yours, that are concerned about indoctrinating kids with a pervasive sense of obedience if not at the administrative level then certainly with certain teachers.
And anyways, I'm not being absolutist about this - I don't really think that it's a terrible idea, but I do think that it sends a mixed message which is somewhat contrary to the pervasive value we currently, as a society, place on education. You don't learn to read specifically so that you can get a job, but rather because reading is something that well-developed people can do, and it's viewed as its own reward.
Oh I'm not saying that a kid from Eton is any less capable of believing in the wonder of education than a kid from your average secondary school. However the former isn't going to suddenly be convinced in the benefits of education after being given a small monetary incentive. The latter child on the other hand who has to go home to an estate property headed by a single-parent and share a small bedroom with five siblings is going to find an income from just going to school a revelation.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
So, senj, do we keep throwing a fucking bandaid on the sucking chest wound? Or do we, you know, actually treat the fucking problem in the first place? Incentives are only a plaster - if we want to actually solve the problem, we need to attack it at the source! Sure, paying kids to learn will work somewhat - but not nearly as much as making "being smart" culturally acceptable.
Arguments over your skepticism aside, I think that creating divisions within the student body in this way would create more opposition to such a program than support.
I mean, Jesus, you can't just give candy to some kids and not to others like that. It would be bedlam.
I actually did this for a spell, and yes eventually went back for the diploma, much more-so out of personal expectations of "success" then out of the consciousness that I'd make more money. I don't think that I'm alone in having had an upbringing in which, yes, college was expected, but that the economic angle wasn't dwelled upon.
Good, meet Perfect.
I propose that you two do not become enemies.
You cant just wave a wand and change cultural attitudes of acceptability; things become acceptable because they are done by or believed by the majority, or at least some sufficiently large minority or plurality.
So I think you're proposing going about things ass-backwards. The symptom-cause metaphor doesn't hold here; rather it's a question of attraction and critical mass. You provide incentives to gain attractiveness to move in the direction of critical mass.
I admit that this might have colored my view of education.
Still, it's hard to imagine that I'm that far off when I see so many college kids still pursuing the same soft-science and liberal-arts degrees that more or less guarantee difficulty in finding good employment.
Basically, if you offer external incentives for an activity, people deprecate the intrinsic rewards of that activity. I'm not saying that our present school system is a utopia of learning for learning's sake, but I would submit that offering students cash will make it that much harder to foster any kind of intellectual curiosity or interest.