COMMENTARY | When I read the opinion article from The Week my interest was piqued. According to the article and the original report from the Cincinnati Enquirer, students at a Cincinnati high school are getting Visa gift cards for perfect attendance and good behavior. In addition to the weekly gift cards, good students get $5 deposited into an account they can access upon graduation. The initiative is expected to cost $40,000 coming from private donations and the federal Workforce Investment Act.
I am a first-year teacher far from Cincinnati. In August I would have railed against such an abuse of taxpayers' dollars, waxing eloquent on how it was wrong to bribe teens to slouch to class only to disrupt the students who wanted to be there. But time in the trenches has increased my pragmatism.
I agree it is not a good idea to bribe kids to come to school and behave because it reinforces the wrong messages. I agree students should learn to appreciate concepts like discipline, work ethic and delayed gratification. I agree that paying cash for attendance is misleading because it sets up a false impression of what post-high school life is like, where cash is only received upon acceptable performance in addition to perfect attendance.
But my change in opinion has come from the scary fact many teenagers, or at least many of the sophomores I teach in general-level world history courses, refuse to accept the importance of discipline, work ethic and delayed gratification. They will look you in the eye, unblinking, and accept a failing grade. They do not fear failure, at least until it is too late. Many students will willingly fail despite the countless options I have given them to succeed.
As a society we cannot afford to let so many students fail. While bribes might reinforce the wrong messages, perhaps a small percentage will improve their performance enough to where the correct messages also become ingrained. The good behavior and perfect attendance becomes an invaluable habit that, originally based on financial reward, becomes ingrained and eventually appreciated for its own sake. Maybe 10 percent of the bad students will become decent students and learn to become productive members of society.
That $40,000 may only turn a dozen or so bad students in a large school into decent students, but that is money well spent.
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