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Cash For Grades

Decent Essays

As a child, have you experienced at any time that your parents have compensated you for earning great grades? Many parents currently will pay their children if they bring home an A in their report card. The parents feel that their child should deserve compensation for the decent grades they receive. But these parents do not understand the negative effects that can occur to their children. Parents should not pay their children if they excel in their education because money may not be an effective motivator, it does not instill intrinsic motivation, and it can cause unfair pressure in the classroom that leads to poor performance.
Money may not be an effective motivator for great grades. Liz Pulliam Weston, who wrote the article “Is it Smart …show more content…

Someone should not pay children as motivation to learn, instead they should learn if they want to ("Cash for Grades"). There would be no point for children to leave for school if they have no intrinsic motivation to learn new topics. Subsequently, in the article “Cash for Grades: Should public schools adopt cash-for-grades programs?”, it says “paying children to earn good grades is ‘getting people to do things for all the wrong reasons.... They will do well in school, maybe, but they will not take any of it out with them. Instead of trying to cultivate an interest in learning, curiosity… you are just turning this into another job” ("Cash for Grades"). It would not be an excellent idea if children do not expand on what he has learned in school as he will not earn an excellent paying job, but instead will acquire a lower paying job or become …show more content…

Many states and cities have these Cash-for-Grades programs that will pay children if they achieve satisfying grades. One of these programs is the Kentucky Educational Excellence Scholarship. It provides up to 500 dollars in state revenues to children that have all A’s in all their classes. But when children obtain a C, their parent’s will become furious since their child has a C, and receives no money (Flannery). It would be wrong considering children that do not have wonderful grades could be from poorer families, so they will probably need the money more than children coming from the higher classes. According to the article, “Cash for Grades”, it says, “In a well-known Stanford University experiment, more than three decades old, researchers divided preschoolers into two groups: one that would get gold stars for their drawings and one that would not. Both drew enthusiastically, but when asked to draw again – without a reward – the gold-star group cut its drawing time in half. It appeared as if they had lost enthusiasm for the task when it did not come with a reward” (Flannery). These children are only doing the work to receive the reward at the end, not for the benefit that it can help them later in life. If we keep rewarding children for everything they do, then they will expect a reward for everything they do later in

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