Dear Friends,
It seems to me that we should introduce our children to the capitalist system as soon as possible. Tying effort to earnings. The quickest and most easy way to do this is to pay for grades.
The cost is not as much as you might think. If the state paid children one dollar for every grade and for every “A” then a child in tenth grade who scored an A in every class would get forty dollars a week and one thousand six hundred dollars in a forty week school year.
This is not a great expense as far as school goes. The extra cost can easily be made up by increasing class size. As students get used to the idea that they will be tested weekly. A good test result will give immediate gratification in the form of money. Think about how this incentive will work.
Younger students, in the first grade, would be paid a dollar for every A. They could earn four dollars a week if they score all A’s. The cost would be far lower and the reduction in class size to make up the funding would be equally small.
Lower grades would get lower amounts. In First grade for example a B would get the student eighty cents and a C would garner fifty cents. A D or lower wouldn’t get rewarded. Students would try harder for the money alone. The result will be better educated children. With the added benefit that they have tied work and effort to earnings.
Tying effort to earnings makes a nation’s workforce much more efficient. That efficiency (productivity) translates into better pay. (Relative to the global economy). A nation’s people can have many attitudes to work. A negative attitude to work is corrosive to economies. A positive one makes a people wealthy.
With children motivated to learn, (or make money), class sizes will naturally be larger. A teacher will be better able to control a group of students that self control. Problems will be solved on the playground. Remember children are human beings. When there is money at stake human beings self regulate. Immediate positive motivators are most efficient to children.
The argument that children should “want to learn. After all they are the ones who will benefit.” Is totally sophist. Children have no concept of reality. They only just got here. There is no way they can deduce what will be in their best interest ten or twenty years from now. That is why God gave children parents. Society takes them (parents and morals) away.
Poor children will have the most inducement to excel. To a poor teenager forty dollars a week is a fair bit of money. Especially if all they have to do to get it is score well on tests. Every teenager wants money to blow on foolishness. Even if they use it to buy food at least they will have extra food. And the money to buy it.
There was an economic study done a few years ago comparing teacher productivity in 1971 to teacher productivity in 2002. During that timeframe American worker productivity rose much faster than the rest of the world. But American teacher productivity as measured in dollars spent per test score went down. The study figured a seventy one percent drop in teacher productivity. Measured in inflation adjusted dollars from 1971 to 2002. Clearly something is wrong.
The first time I heard of this idea I scoffed. ‘Paying for grades… another way someone else can spend my money.‘ Then I thought about it. Put into the context of incentives, perverse and efficient, the idea has real merit. The political forces that have reduced our schools efficiency are too heavy to move. So if we can convince some schools to enact this program as a pilot the results will speak for themselves. Costs will go down. Because teacher productivity will go up.
Student achievement will go up because students will will it. At a faster rate than before, a new rate, that will reset the curve…
