WWYD: Paying Children for Good Grades
“Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours.” — Orison Swett Marden
In this week’s What Would You Do series, we ponder if pay for performance is a child appropriate reward system. The question was brought to light when Dana Rudolph at Mombian asked, “Would you pay your child $100 for making the honor roll? Or $20 for each A?”
She continues, “Some parents swear by monetary grade incentives, reports the Hartford Courant. Others say the practice sends the wrong message, and the good behavior will disappear if the reward does. They also worry it may cause parents to ignore the root causes of poor grades, such as depression or learning difficulties.”
If you click on over to the Hartford Courant article you’ll see that, “The answer is a muddy one. There are those who believe it is never appropriate to pay a child for a particular behavior. Others say it depends on the child’s age, the situation, how it’s done, the size of the reward, etc.”
Kathleen Megan interviews experts on both sides of the spectrum. One said, “The more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in what they are doing to get the reward.” Others point to, “Research has shown that the best way to change behavior is through positive reinforcement. And while the intangible rewards – the satisfaction, a word of praise – may be preferable, it often takes more tangible rewards to get kids – and adults – moving.”
That expert is preaching to the choir with me… after all, I’ve spent the better part of my work life in commissioned sales. A good reward always motivates me but what about our innocent babies… is paying for good grades nothing more than a parental bribe?
ParentCenter has a black and white answer: “No. Rewards are fine, but you should teach your child that homework and schoolwork are responsibilities ” not something simply done for money.”
So what do you think? What’s wrong with bankrolling behavior that leads to good grades? Or is a cash bribe fine for the kiddies? You decide. Comments welcomed.
For Pete’s sake! I spent my entire adult life being “bribed” by my employers to do my work! To the extent that school is preparation for the wonderful world of, er, adultery – bribes are realistic.
I’m in the middle of reading Alfie Kohn’s book _Unconditional Parenting_, which I was inspired to pick up after reading a couple of amazing parenting-moment posts by Polly of http://www.lesbiandad.net.
Prior to reading Kohn’s book, I might have said, “Sure, why not?” to the idea of paying kids for good grades.
But, it seems that the research on punishment, reward, and moral/ethical development in children indicates that this is a bad idea.
You might get the short term outcome you want, but it’s actually counterproductive in terms of teaching a child to value learning or to work harder than the minimum needed to achieve whatever monetary reward you’ve set up. There’s a lot more to it, obviously, and Kohn goes through tons and tons of research on child development over the last probably 60 years.
The Kohn book is VERY interesting, and I think it’s going to become part of my new “default baby shower gift” package. I wholeheartedly recommend it to parents and parents-to-be.
A lot of the Korean kids I knew growing up were paid for grades. I was too. But unlike my peers, I never cheated to get good grades. I think that it only encourages kids to game the system for an improper outcome of a grade vs actual learning. It’s a slippery slope on how to properly incentivize studying.
Rather than pay your kids for grades, why not spend time with them doing homework? Reading? Monitoring their activities? I thought that’s what parenting was. It’s funny how modern parents think they can run their family like a business and children are merely employees. It’s really weird.
The most influence a parent can have upon their child in terms of learning is teaching them the simple value of reading, or actually assisting them in doing their homework and being available for questions. Every parent should learn about learning styles to figure out what techniques will best help their kids. Some kids are really good visual learners vs kinesthenic (always fidgety) vs aural, etc. I love to read, buy my friend in high school couldn’t translate a Latin sentence till we diagrammed the hell out of it into a picture she could look at.
No child is a failure, and grades are only one measure of success as a human being. Money for grades is a bad lesson because that kid will grow up equating money/salary with self-worth if you aren’t careful.
I totally agree with Mapgirl. Grades are only one measure of a child’s “success.” In our house, my eldest would probably be extremely motivated by the money- she wants all she can get to feed her American Girl doll habit. However, my middle child has learning disabilities. Success for him might be a “c” average- challenges for him are behaviors.
We feel that spending the time with our kids on their projects and interests is where the payoff is. My eldest (in 2nd grade) had an assignment in March for Women’s History Month to write a report. She chose Amelia Earhart and she read several books to me about her- a little each night- with me helping on tough words. We built a pretend airplane for her to play in- like Amelia did on her grandparents roof when she was a girl. We talked about the mystery of Amelia and how even today, people are working on theories of her disappearance. She got an A on the report- and was able to tell the class about many aspects of Amelia’s life beyond the assignment.
Meanwhile, my 4 yr old middle child has his challenges. We are working closely with him on writing his letters and numbers and made him a special notebook with each letter on pages for him to copy. He is an artistic guy and uses his markers to make many different colored letters on each page- his creative way to get thru the banality of learning how to write his letters and numbers. When a page is completed, believe me- it is a beautiful rainbow work of art to behold.
These specific interventions will be way more valuable to them in the long haul than a few greenbacks floated their way!
I do give Kate (my 14-year-old) money for good grades, because it’s something my Mom started when she was raising her. I don’t like it, and I really don’t agree with it. (I don’t even think it’s very motivating, I think Kate would be a very good student, paid or not.)
But I’m not sure how I can stop the tradition without it feeling like a punishment?
And just for the record, Kate gets money for chores each week, too, and no chores = no money. That’s something I think is actually motivating for her, whereas grades are too infrequent to really make a financial difference to her.
Not only did we not get money from my parents, they made it extremely clear that it did not matter at all to them what letter grade was on the report card when we brought it home… the only thing that mattered was that we tried our best. My mom is a teacher, and my and her friends were always amazed/disturbed at her attitude about it. But the fact is, I always got As without having to do that much work… I am one of those annoying people who can remember everything and does very well in school without much effort. I think my parents probably realized that when I learned to read at 3 and decided to spend their bribe money on beers for them after having to answer all my “but why?” questions – ha! My sister on the other hand was not as “naturally” smart, so Bs were her thing. Would it be fair for me to get more money, just because I test well and have a good memory for facts, when my sister actually “worked” harder in her studies? No. I think our success was related to our parents being very involved with our schools, as well as encouraging reading from a very young age.
I completely agree with the quote at the start of the post:
“Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours.” — Orison Swett Marden
I have found that the most successful people I know were not given allowances or rewarded for things like grades. They learned ealy f they wanted something, they had to motivate themselves to make it happen
To the contrary, I believe rewards work against and not for us. I’m reading Mindset by Carol Dweck, and she has some very interesting studies and things to say about this topic!
Parents should be teaching their children that loving learning is important, not loving money and GPAs. Sit down and read to kids, take them to science museums, and help them with homework. If you honestly think that learning is important, you can teach your child that it is, too.
I think it’s a terrible idea to bribe kids for grades. I’ve known students with 4.0’s. They drop classes that are fascinating but might be too difficult to ace, work insanely hard on things that don’t matter to them, and blow off friends because they “need to study.” On Saturday night. During spring break.
I’ve always gotten good grades because I like reading, learning new things, and throwing myself into projects. However, I don’t get top grades because I would rather work on something I love than put in the extra 10-20 hours/week of drudgery a 4.0 would take.
Think a 4.0 is necessary to get into top schools? Every grad school I applied to (Princeton, MIT, UC Berkeley, and Columbia) didn’t.
In this week’s Carnival of Ethics, Values & Personal Finance:
http://www.moneysmartlife.com/carnival-of-ethics-values-personal-finance-7
Being 15 and currently attending a school where my parents ‘bribe’ me for good grades ( I get the best marks possible, not bragging, merely stating facts.), I feel the ideals behind teaching children that bribes are the only reason to acquire beneficial marks are slightly wrong.
Teaching your kids ahead and during the time what those grades really mean, how far the marks will take them, and getting them to realize what an impact they have is step one of your journey.
Bribes are fine, if my parents turned around and stated they were never going to pay me for grades again and could care less about my education, it will do no more than urge me to try harder.
I always consider the fact that while I am paid, I myself realize the importance the grades hold within themselves.
Teaching that to your kids is more important than simply throwing them out the door with a few bucks for getting an A on that last paper they brought home.