Better Grades Through Bling-Bling

August 6, 2008

Better Grades Through Bling-Bling

With alarming failure rates at our nation's inner city schools, one wants to celebrate any attempt to motivate success. Still, sincere efforts must be examined not according to their intentions but to their likely or demonstrated results. One new concept that is gaining attention gives kids immediate cash or gifts for completing normal academic tasks, such as homework. While such programs are well intentioned, hustling minority kids with "bling-bling" is sure to cultivate materialism and deteriorate family relationships.

Harvard economist Roland Fryer developed the Sparks Incentive program in an effort to raise achievement scores for America's black children. In the pay-to-learn scheme, children are redirected from finding intrinsic meaning in their work, and are instead seduced to pursue the vanity of money. The power of learning the value of delayed gratification, one of the most important principles of long-term success in anything, is totally incapacitated.

Last year, the New York City schools, desperate for solutions, hired Fryer as its Chief Equality Officer. His job was to figure out how to narrow the racial gap in achievement in the city's schools. Today, over 5,000 students in the New York City public school system are participating in this privately funded program. In one Brooklyn elementary school, students can earn up to $250 a year. School districts in at least twelve states have similar incentive programs, including the cities of Atlanta, Dallas, and Baltimore.

One misguided school even offers free cell phones as an incentive. Fryer defends this rueful practice saying, "[with] cell phones, [as] financial rewards for kids, we're meeting kids where they are and giving them rewards to do the things that we want them to do." What's next? Free sagging pants? Coupons for weaves, rims, designer jeans, gold chains, and gold-teeth grills?

This type of disregard for the practical effects produced by striving for good ends via dubious means reduces the humanity of entire families. Black kids are more than simply a variable in a complex economic algorithm applied to education philosophy. Black kids are human beings with inherent dignity who must be formed into virtuous adults destined to make a positive contribution to the world within the context of family and community.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Madeline Levine, author of The Price of Privilege, reports that research shows that giving kids cash for grades is one of the most psychologically damaging approaches to education. Manipulating behavior in this way profoundly sabotages the internal mechanisms needed to form the character and integrity required for adulthood.

Hustling performance with cash can never substitute, Levine argues, "for parental interest, presence, and guidance." It leads to a lessening of parental influence and cultivates greed. One would think that America's public school system would not wish to cultivate "bling, bling" ideology.

Children have a nascent ability to desire and appreciate parental approval. Once upon a time, children were challenged to perform well--or else parents would be involved. Children knowing, early on, that they are accountable to their parents--and that other adults cooperate in that accountability--creates conditions for healthy family life in general.

The late Professor Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon University railed against the deification of material goods as incentives for living well at the univeristy's commencement ceremony on May 18, 2008. Pausch encouraged graduates to pursue meaningful vocations that stirred their spirits. "You will not find that passion in things," he warned, "and you will not find that passion in money."

When asked if giving cash for performance might send a message to children that learning is not its own reward, Fryer responded, "Those are not my concerns. My biggest concern is [that] we don't do anything." Why is cultivating self-centered materialism and breaking down parent/child relationships the only alternative to doing nothing? Herein lies the problem of hiring an economist who may not have the wherewithal to connect economics to the formation of children with character and integrity.

While economics teaches helpful things about the role of incentives, the dignity of children and the integrity of family life cannot be subverted for algorithmic results. Ignoring the character process will give us a generation of children who can perform on exams but have little humanity.

Anthony B. Bradley, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Acton Institute and Assistant Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis.

Comments

Achilles: fspiper66@bak.rr.com

It is such a breath of fresh air to hear common sense on this ever so important topic. Professor Bradley's voice is what the beyond redemption system of public education so desperately needs to hear. The absurd has become so common place that Roland Fryer's asinine ideas are met with vacuous approbation rather than the shocked outrage that would be appropriate. That the family values of this great nation have eroded so treacherously is without doubt. What is vital to consider is the role that public education has played in that erosion. I would suggest it has been substantial and that at present, an insane asylum is more sane than our public schools. Professor Bradley mentions in another excellent article “radical individualism” which is an offshoot of our ridiculous efforts to build self esteem in our children. Narcissism has run amuck.
Thank you so much Professor Bradley.

Dovwe: dovwe4real@yahoo.com

Please, i really want to appreciate you for this captivating write-up. Do keep it up because it will affect our society positively. Thanks Dovwe from Delta state of Nigeria.

Scott:

Chris, indeed children are naturally primed to learn. Also, we do need to provide the means to encourage them to learn, however this comes about not by the refusal for competition, but by the encouragement of it, rightly ordered. Imagine an Olympics which gave everyone equal recognition for simply showing up. This idea is laughable for the same reason that schools not instilling a desire to compete and excel have amounted to that quagmire we call the U.S. public school system. It is because they must not produce, and yet get paid either the same money, or more, each year that there is such a vast chasm of learning in today’s youth vs. yester year’s. This is of course not the only contributor, but one of many. For further causes, I strongly recommend Dr. Bradley’s previous commentary “One Million Reasons For Radical Education Reform”.

Also, I don’t see how competition leads to a zero sum game. It is competition in business that allows you to buy that $1 solar powered calculator today that only a number of years ago cost $100. So you see, through competition and using our God given creative abilities we learn how to do things more efficiently and for less cost.

I do agree that our current model of public education is totally inappropriate; however, it is exactly because of the lack of competition (public schools being run more like a soviet program than a private business that is required to produce or go under). In one instance, just as we should be asking “why is there wealth”, rather than asking “why is there poverty” when we are all born into the same base position of life: naked, penniless, and without any skills; we should also be asking the question "why did/does classical education produce such great results in learning and knowledge for all of mankind", rather than focusing on tweaking a system that is completely bankrupt at its core (public school education = governmental indoctrination).

Kathryn Hickok: kathryn@cascadepolicy.org

“Paying” students for academic effort would seem to reinforce the desire for instant material gratification that is challenging their schoolwork to begin with, rather than to help children grow into adults possessing the self-mastery to sacrifice these desires for higher values. As they grow, children need character formation not only to excel in school but eventually to commit to relationships, to fulfill obligations, to raise children, and to be the sort of people who at times can rise to the truly heroic (in helping professions, law enforcement, the military, clergy, and every other walk of life). At some point, all material incentives fall short, and we need virtue. To offer children less, as Dr. Bradley says, is to raise them to less than their true dignity.

I have seen elementary children behind in school be rewarded by teachers with expensive toys. The reaction of other children who were not in remedial classes was that it appeared to pay to be not so good at reading….

Thank you, Dr. Bradley, for your insights into many issues facing low-income children.

Kathryn Hickok
Director, Children's Scholarship Fund-Portland
Cascade Policy Institute

Chris Manes: lokicsm@aol.com

Thanks for this enlightened essay. Our model of education, based on competition, is totally inappropriate. Children learn naturally -- they are primed to learn. We need to provide the means to encourage what comes naturally, rather than seeing learning as a zero sum game.

Robert Kalb: bob.kalb@gmail.com

Anyone contemplating pay-for-performance to inspire our children to do better in school should first read, "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn.
In his book, he addresses this issue head on, and challenges our reliance on carrot-stick psychology at home, school and at work. This is a must read, and I was surprised that it was not mentioned by Mr. Bradley.

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