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I do not think it is a good idea to offer cash rewards to students for high grades and test scores. The notion that this would motivate students does not allow for all the downsides that I feel could occur.

My first question is very simple. Where will the money come from? How would we fund such a program? We would not be paying just for the rewards, but for the cost of administering the system as well. I think that it would be a major task just to administer this program in a smaller school, and such a program could potentially burden the entire system to the point that the learning environment would suffer.

I also feel that there is a definite downside to teaching children that there are immediate rewards for doing well. Reality is harsh, life itself is hard, and there are very few rewards realized in the short term. If we condition students to expect a reward for everything they do then we are setting them up for failure. Once they hit the real working world they will soon realize that hard work does not always pay off immediately - and in some cases, it does not pay at all.

I can assure you that if we pay rewards for good grades, etc. then we have already created yet another dividing line among an already diverse group of students. We know that some students will do very well and thus get the reward. Some students will work just as hard and still not be able to obtain the reward. We can look at this as a sorting of the "haves" and the "have nots ".

Would we be laying the foundation for yet another way for children to segregate themselves? I think so. Students would have the framework to socially rank themselves and others into potentially dangerous groups. In short, I think you would see significant divides between those that get the reward and those that do not. We should not create programs that divide students and can give rise to the potential for violence.

Learn more about this author, Kerry L. Thomas.
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