The shoes are definitely a bigger problem - but it’s not addressable. There will always be daily reminders that some kids have rich parents and some don’t. But paying kids for good grades takes it a step further, because it leads to thinking that kids do/don’t deserve things. And when kids put in effort but don’t get what they think they deserve, that builds resentment or even causes them to give up.
ETA: $100 can be a big chunk of change at that age, again depending on region, but here I’d think that’s about 10 weeks of allowance or a big birthday gift.
If my grandson gets all A’s for both semesters of 6th grade it’s $200 for the term. Next year it will be $250 for the term, and continue to increase in high school. He lives in Oklahoma, and $200 here isn’t chicken scratch. He also gets a nice dinner out at his favorite restaurant.
It’s not so much that it’s wrong, just that it’s unnecessary and sends a message about being paid for doing what you should be doing anyway.
My brainy brother got straight A’s through high school and never got paid a penny, he didn’t even get a car, nothing, however he got his college and law school fees paid for by my parents, which meant more to him than anything else.
Do like Andy did.
When Opie had $50, Andy made him save most of it. Bought him a piggy bank.
Opie was getting 25 cents a week allowance at the time, so temptations were rife.
He really wanted that new fishing pole.
Then the guy came and claimed the $50.
Poor Opie. He got bumpkis.
What do you mean it leads to thinking kids do/don’t deserve things? Don’t we already think that there are some things kids do or do not deserve?
I agree it’s unnecessary, so I guess the answer to the OP is, “No, I don’t think they should be paid,” but I’m not seeing the harm either. I got a weekly allowance for doing things I should have been doing anyway including cleaning my room. I don’t see this as being fundamentally different.
Life is all about getting paid for doing the right thing by somebody else’s lights. Money from your employer, love from your SO, approval from your large (or small) circle of friends, etc.
It’s a reasonable set of questions about how to give a kid training in this reality and at what age to start. But it’s the kids who never learn this stuff who have real struggles later in life.
I do not see this as having a moral dimension at all.
I don’t know. How come Santa brings good presents to kids with wealthy parents and not to kids with poor parents? I imagine some kids get money for doing chores like dishes, vacuuming the living room, picking up the yard, etc., etc. while others do not.
There’s evidence that extrinsic rewards can diminish a person’s intrinsic motivation to do something. When you pay someone to do something, it becomes a “job” that you do in order to get paid and not because you like it or get satisfaction from it or find it intrinsically worth doing.
Getting good grades is a combination of things that are within the student’s control (like effort and diligence) and those that are not (like natural talent or getting an easy vs. hard teacher).
If good grades are what you prioritize and incentivize, will that lead to over-prioritizing and over-emphasizing them, so that, for example, the student avoids classes that might be more challenging because they might not get an A, or they avoid other activities that might lead to a happier, more balanced life in order to spend more time studying?
Will rewarding good grades, especially an all-or-nothing reward that’s only offered for all A’s, motivate the student to cheat or game the system?
I’m currently in middle school and I’m always getting stait A’s every trimester, hoping for a reward or at least a good job. Never got one. Right now, I’m crying because I got a B. What’s the point of good grades if you don’t get anything in return?
I’ll be seeing people in my classes being happy about B’s and C’s, and getting rewarded for just passing.
The point, such as it is, is that the rewards of good grades are cumulative and mostly manifest later in your school career. All of life is an experiment you can only run once. You will never be able to prove that your life will be, or would have been, different upon e.g. leaving high school with a 3.8 or a 1.8 GPA. But it’s certainly the way to bet. The 3.8 GPA scenario will leave you with many more, and much better, futures than will the 1.8 GPA.
All of us here were your age once. Though sadly not anymore. And we recognize that seeing and valuing the future is very hard at your age. The best I can tell you is to take our word for it: thinking that the obvious immediate rewards for school effort & performance are the ones that matter is a mistake. An understandable mistake, but a mistake nevertheless.
You’re in this for the long haul; a haul far longer than your current age. Hard though that is for you to to really get just yet.
I don’t think anyone includes middle school classes in a high school GPA. When I was in middle school, everyone who made AB honor roll got prizes. The prizes were like, notebooks and pencils and little four-function calculators. It was the dumbest thing, but at least everyone had a chance no matter what the situation at home was. You also had to be passing your classes to participate in the school dance, if I recall correctly.
I didn’t pay too much attention to how it all worked but I think my middle school grades were a big factor in taking honors and AP classes in high school. For example I got a B in Algebra I and missed out on the fast track for math. Then in high school while I was taking trig, my classmates in calc all failed the test. The school dropped calculus and I never got to learn it. Beyond that, I don’t think the actual middle school grades had any effect.
The overall GPA isn’t taken til highschool. (Here)
But, middle school sets your track in highschool.
I have a 5th grade grandkid. He’s on the gifted and talented program.
He does his work lazily. Makes the grade but doesn’t give a crap, really.
His Mom is trying to encourage him to care by remarking on improvements and, yes gifts. She doesn’t do cash gifts. It’s usually game time on the tablet or Lego.
She thinks him being in the G&T will set him up in Middleschool and then Highschool. I’m not so sure it will matter all that much. He’ll go to University. A scholarship would be nice. But either way, barring any unforeseen impediments, He’ll go.
I certainly hope they have a degree where Lego is helpful.
We never got paid - 5 kids in a lower-middle class family meant no spare funds. What we did get was a talking to if we didn’t get A’s. And if we weren’t the first on in the class to finish a test or a project… Can’t remember how many times Mom bragged about her report cards. Yeah, whatever.
We didn’t pay our daughter, but we didn’t berate her. If she did poorly on a test, I’d ask if she understood where the problem was and did she understand it afterwards. As it happened, she did well enough to get a full ride to the University of Central Florida, so there’s that.
My granddaughter is just in the first grade and grandson is in pre-school, but both are very bright kids (not just me bragging - they’re sharp!) I don’t know what, if anything, their parents have planned for their future education, but I make an effort to let them tell me things they learned and believe it or not, I’ve learned stuff from them. The only monetary award awaiting them is an investment account I set up with my last 401k that will be for their post-secondary education, whatever that may be. And right now, only their mother knows about it.
I had a teacher in elementary school who basically did that. We got points for grades that we could exchange for prizes. Quite humorously it went the way of the Pepsi one where they offered a Harrier Jet as their top prize assuming no one would come close to those number of points, though someone found a way and ended up suing them for the prize.
Part way through the first quarter the top students saw that the top prizes were within their reach, and so did the teacher. The teacher tried to backtrack it and said it resets every quarter so each student needs to pick their prize, when one kid pulled out the mimeograph sheet the teacher handed out that stated explicitly that points can be used at the end of the quarter to claim a prize or the student can chose to save them if they wanted to go for a bigger prize. After which the teacher let it go, and many students claimed some pricy prizes at the end of the year, which the teacher did make good on.
If you’re interested in college, school is a competitive sport, and grades are the score. Even if you’re not interested in college, getting good grades means you’re learning things, and that will be a big deal when you’re an adult.
None of us can change your parents reaction to grades, but the parents who do reward their kids aren’t doing it for fun. They’re doing it because they know how important grades are to setting a kid on the path for a successful adulthood.
I’d like everyone who is like, “Kids shouldn’t work for extrinsic rewards, they should work for the intrinsic reward of a job well done!” to go have that talk with their employer as an explanation why they’ll be forgoing a paycheck.
I mean, yes: in an ideal post-communist utopia, each of us perform according to our ability and receive according to our need. But as long as we’re in a capitalist hellscape where performance is rewarded with cash, I’m not extra-upset about kids having their performance rewarded with cash.
I don’t pay my own kids for grades. When I remember, we take report cards to Krispy Kreme, where they get a free doughnut for every A. But I’ve got kids that are pretty motivated to work in school: we’re a nerdy family where all of us spend our days in school in one capacity or another, and it’s not hard for us to build that motivation. I know other families are different, and however they can motivate their kids to focus on academics, I’m not gonna second-guess them.
If we were serious about removing extrinsic motivation for education, we’d remove grades and we’d track student engagement right alongside math and reading test scores. Until we start taking it seriously, money-for-grades is totally unremarkable to me.
If I was going to reward then I’d reward for process, which is under their control, not for result, which often isn’t.
I want to see them challenging themselves. All As implies a lack of adequate challenge. I want to celebrate the imperfect result more than the perfect one.
I want to see tangible evidence of consistent effort. The time put in, previewing, reviewing, etc. That deserves recognition.
I want to celebrate that they have learned skills and information even if the teachers’ metrics do not perfectly reflect it.
I wouldn’t reward for happening to be tall and I wouldn’t reward for being bright enough to do well while putting in little effort.
As a parent and a teacher.
Learning should be for learning’s sake. If not that, teaching students how to play the game (cynical I know). And lastly, yes it is their job and their pay is a high school diploma.
If gaining knowledge is not viewed as its own reward then children focus on the wrong outcomes in education
