Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School?

In junior high school, one of my classmates had a TV addiction — back before it was normal. This boy — we'll call him Ethan — was an encyclopedia of vacuous content, from The A-Team to Who's the Boss?


Then one day Ethan's mother made him a bold offer. If he could go a full month without watching any TV, she would give him $200. None of us thought he could do it. But Ethan quit TV, just like that. His friends offered to let him cheat at their houses on Friday nights (Miami Vice nights!). Ethan said no.


One month later, Ethan's mom paid him $200. He went out and bought a TV, the biggest one he could find.


Since there have been children, there have been adults trying to get them to cooperate. The Bible repeatedly commands children to heed their parents and proposes that disobedient children be stoned to death or at least have their eyes picked out by ravens. Over the centuries, the stick (or paddle or switch) has lost favor, in most cases, to the carrot. Today the petty bribes — a sticker for using the toilet or a cookie for sitting still in church — start before kids can speak in full sentences.


In recent years, hundreds of schools have made these transactions more businesslike, experimenting with paying kids with cold, hard cash for showing up or getting good grades or, in at least one case, going another day without getting pregnant. (See pictures of kids comparing their paychecks at school.)


I have not met a child who does not admire this trend. But it makes adults profoundly uncomfortable. Teachers complain that we are rewarding kids for doing what they should be doing of their own volition. Psychologists warn that money can actually make kids perform worse by cheapening the act of learning. Parents predict widespread slacking after the incentives go away. And at least one think-tank scholar has denounced the strategy as racist. The debate has become a proxy battle for the larger war over why our kids are not learning at the rate they should be despite decades of reforms and budget increases.


But all this time, there has been only one real question, particularly in America's lowest-performing schools: Does it work?



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I think it is a slippery slope. As I see it a long term "bribe" like asking a kid to do well all year can be a good thing, but short term ones, e.g. weekly, are a bad idea. Also the reward should be within reason.


I can't really explain my reasoning though. ;)

As they say, anecdotes are not data, but in my family certain children were bribed and certain children were not. There is a pretty strong correlation now that we are adults: the more bribery as a child, the more disfunctional as an adult...


For example, the brother who was bribed the most often [i.e. an action figure every Saturday if he managed to TURN IN all of his school assignments that week, regardless of his grades] is also the brother who in his 30s ran up a USD50K credit card debt and asked my parents to bail him out.

I think in my brother's case, it wasn't so much a matter of bribing for good behavior, but a bribe for "normal" behavior -- at least as far as the rest of us went.


RE: "if you're good all week, then we'll go to Disney on Saturday"

I think the distinction is this: if you have to do something special every week to promote what should be fairly routine behavior, then it isn't rewarding hard work, it's negotiating with terrorists, but if you are doing something special to promote above and beyond normal behavior then it's a reward for hard work.


In my brother's case, it was definitely the former. And his CC debt had nothing to do with a special situation -- life happens, and sometimes CCs are just the fastest, easiest way to handle that. It just hadn't occurred to him that if you can only pay the minimum on your CCs it doesn't count as living within your means, and that opening a new CC account wasn't the same as having more money to spend.


In my opinion, it came down to a matter of external vs internal motivators, and for whatever reason this one brother never developed his internal motivators. We try very very hard with our kids to make sure that they have to live with the natural consequences of their behavior -- ours are too small to care much about money or things yet [my eldest thinks it is a treat if I pick her up from preschool on my bike instead of taking a taxi], but sleeping [or not] and eating [or not] all have natural consequences -- being too tired to have fun or hungry before the next meal.


My eldest can even take this concept to the next level -- if she has a treat and then starts whinging, I tell her that "What I am learning right now is that when I take you for ice cream after school [or whatever the treat was], it makes you cranky." She stops mid-whinge and then is very very careful to be on her very best behavior after that.


So, bottom line -- no I don't think kids should be bribed to do well in school, but I do think it's okay to celebrate their successes. For me, there's a bright line between the two.

REWARDING FOR GOOD BEHAVIOUR comes after the child has done what he/she is supposed to do on their own accord. Just like in an office environment, if you work hard, you may get rewarded by promotion or more money.


BRIBING happens before the child does what he/she is expected to do. Then the child will expect a bribe everytime to be motivated.