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The New York Times reports that schools have begun using bribes to entice students to come to class. Dismayed by poor attendance, schools are now discouraging absenteeism by offering cash and material rewards for perfect attendance. At Boston's Chelsea High School, students get $25 for each quarter of perfect attendance, plus a $25 bonus if they don't miss a day all year. But that's a comparatively modest deal. Chicago's public schools offer the families of students with perfect attendance substantial help with groceries, mortgages, and rent. Students across the country have won cars, iPods, computers, trips to Disneyland, and thousands of dollars in cash prizes, all for simply showing up.
Pragmatists celebrate the advent of attendance bribes, arguing that whatever works must be right. They point to improved attendance across the board (except at Chelsea, where students feel the rewards are too small to bother with), and to rising test scores. Critics, by contrast, lament how readily educators seem to have accepted the idea that kids should expect to be paid for living up to minimal expectations. Most disturbing are the rationalizers, who argue that it is actually appropriate to pay students to show up for class, since "incentives ... parallel the working world, where employees are given financial incentives to work harder or better."
One can only speculate about how a K-12 culture of bribery, in which kids learn to expect material rewards for doing what ought to be its own reward, will affect the already troubled undergraduate culture of American colleges and universities. For years now, campuses have been competing for students not by touting their strong academics, but by flaunting their amenities. Multi-million dollar rec centers, luxury dorms, saunas, climbing walls, skating rinks, golf courses, massage studios, and video arcades have all become commonplace on campuses where catering to students' comfort has become more important than cutting skyrocketing costs or improving educational opportunities. The message many schools are already sending is clear--today's finest colleges double as country clubs; a school's quality can be measured by the excellence of its leisure facilities. In the present climate, abdication of academic responsibility--as documented in rampant grade inflation and growing numbers of graduates who are functionally illiterate--goes hand in hand with the most cynical sorts of pandering. The extension of similar attitudes to K-12 education will only result in students coming to college with an even greater sense of anti-intellectual entitlement than many arguably already do.
That's not going to be good for anyone--and the folks who are teaching kids that they should be paid for attending to their own interests, as if education is not itself a priceless acquisition, should be able to see that.
Posted by acta online on February 05, 2006 at February 5, 2006 09:41 PM
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