(Guest post by Greg Forster)
This morning, Pajamas Media carries my column on schools giving out cash or other tangible prizes to reward academic achievement:
These days, if a child asks why he should care about doing well in school, what kind of answer does he get? He gets the same answer from every source: from parents, teachers, and school administrators; from movies and TV shows; from public service announcements, social service programs, and do-gooder philanthropies; from celebrities, athletes, and actors; from supporters and opponents of education reform; from everybody.
The answer is always some version of: you need to do well in school in order to have prosperity later in life.
Well, if you scrape away the sanctimony, what is this but a “bribe” on a colossal scale?
The practice of tangibly rewarding educational success is the subject of a forthcoming article in Education Next, which is a top scholarly journal, as we all know.
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