With as seemingly impossible as it is to get into college these days and the ever more punishing economy and job market our kids are likely to end up in, the stakes have probably never felt higher when it comes to kids’ school grades. Straight A’s can seem like a be-all, end-all achievement.
One dad is willing to do whatever it takes to get his kids to buckle down and succeed, and he’s confident he knows exactly how to do it. But his wife insists he’s wrong. The truth turns out to be quite complicated.
The dad wrote into Slate’s “Care and Feeding” marriage and parenting advice column to try to get to the bottom of this big disagreement with his wife, Alanna. “School will be starting in two weeks for our kids, who are 11 and 13,” he wrote. “I suggested we give them an incentive to do well by implementing a system where we give them money for high marks.”
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He suggested paying $20 per A, $10 per B, and $5 per C that they receive on their report cards, to basically implement a lucrative bonus structure for getting their grades up as high as they can. His wife, however, is dead-set against it.
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“Alana says that getting good grades is its own reward,” the dad went on to say. She contends that paying them off for their As, Bs, and Cs is setting them up to “expect to be paid for ‘doing what they’re supposed to be doing anyway.'”
Granted, that is how the world works for the most part. Most of us would never show up to work again if there weren’t a paycheck involved. But that is because most of us hate our jobs because they’re just jobs, not work that actually matters to us. The whole “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” thing has some truth to it, but it often takes resources many of us don’t have. (We’ll return to this in a minute.)
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The dad contends that he sees nothing wrong “with giving the kids some motivation if it inspires them to apply themselves.” And for her part, “Care and Feeding’s” Ben Mathis-Lilley agreed. “Let’s be real: Sometimes class is boring,” he wrote. “Punch the clock, secure the bag. That’s a useful life lesson too.”
He also mentioned that paying a kid to excel in a class they otherwise would yawn at may be the way they realize they actually love that topic now that they’ve engaged with it. Which is certainly a valid point. The data and experts, however, say it’s far more complicated.
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Experts say paying kids can be effective at getting them to buckle down and study, but unfortunately, the benefits are short-lived. In the long term, it tends to kill what psychologists call “intrinsic motivation,” the initiative and get-up-and-go that comes from inside us, the desire to learn and grow simply for the sake of our own development.
This is why experts now urge parents and educators toward “praising effort, not results.” It helps kids develop the sense of pride, resilience, and “stick-to-itiveness” that is vital to being a successful person.
Which brings us back to the “career” versus “calling” bit from above. Paying a kid for A’s turns school into a purely transactional “job” from which they get a paycheck. Focusing on effort instead helps kids develop the curiosity, pride, and self-leadership crucial to something like getting a passion or “calling” off the ground.
Experts like British psychologist Dr Emma Citron explain that all children have an innate desire to learn, and rewarding them with money rather than engaging them in the process tends to stifle that fire in the long run.
A 2010 study, for example, found that whether or not a monetary reward resulted in better grades was tied to the student’s ability and previous performance: High achievers did better with monetary rewards, while low achievers did worse, suggesting that it made the low achievers feel worse about themselves and their work, and thus made them less motivated to succeed.
Mathis-Lilley is probably right, too, that sometimes a kid just needs an extra incentive. But balance is key. Sure, your kid might get better grades if you pay them off, but once the gravy train ends, will they have actually learned anything or developed their own sense of intrinsic motivation that will translate into success? Experts and the data say no, so it seems the wife wins this one.
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John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
