The Herald Tribune wrote an interesting article about how certain schools are experimenting with providing incentives to students who do well. These incentives range from providing actual money to the option of breaking the dress code and wearing denim. I’m not sure how I feel about this. In a Management Psychology class I took this past semester (I’m getting my MBA) I learned how important it is to praise someone when they do something well. I remember during my elementary school days, the teachers used to reward us with gold stars and a daily grade (which I’m fairly certain meant nothing). Every teacher had their own style of praise but I didn’t find any of them too effective.

As I think about it now, the problem was that people who weren’t praised developed apathy towards the whole praising process. Those kids (myself being one of them) accepted the fact that they wouldn’t be one of the kids with all the gold stars. If anything, the opposite of the desired effect occurred. The underachievers would be the majority and, out of defensiveness, would make fun of the overachievers. Thus, to be cool, you had to not try. As we can see, the old system isn’t ideal. But is this new solution better?

I think giving money or products to kids doesn’t make much sense. Most schools have students that come from all different classes of wealth. The poor kids could work so hard to earn money and buy something they want. Some rich kids could just ask their parents for it and they’d get it. The desire to work would be based on how easily you have access to what you want. Some parents are just bad and would give their kid anything they ask for. The idea of earning something school related sounds interesting. The ability to break the dress code or be first in line at lunch is something parents can’t buy their child. Further study needs to be done on this topic. I wouldn’t be surprised if the positive or negative results of some of these programs is directly correlated to how much parents agree with the program. Either way, it’s nice to see schools trying to innovate in education.