Agree wholeheartedly on all points. Paying for grades teaches the WRONG lesson and is an intellectually lazy way to coerce your children to take their education seriously…one that rarely has the desired outcome.
Love of learning and curiosity should be their own reward. THAT’s what you should be spending your energy on and you don’t even have to open your wallet. Take your kids to the library. Take your kids to a museum. Get involved in their school work with them.
Paying children to pay attention in school only ensures that they will expect some kind of reward throughout their lives for trivial things. This is NOT like the real world. I’ve had the unfortunate experience of managing people like this..lazy and unmotivated.
This is yet another example of the crap I see parents doing now that would never have happened when I was in school and is resulting in a generation of lazy kids with an entitlement mentality.[/quote]
Mead: Just attended my son’s 5th grade graduation (er, sorry, “promotion”) ceremony today. Yes, they apparently graduate kids out of elementary and into middle school. I went to Catholic school, so we had no middle school: It was K – 8 and then on to high school.
I was amazed at the number of awards that are given, and for (to me) absolutely meaningless stuff: Attendance (aren’t you expected to go to school each day?), Citizenship (aren’t you expected to behave?) and other nonsensical little awards, so that no one is left out or “feels bad”.
The point of education is no longer to educate, it is for administrators and Teacher’s Union reps to figure out how to game the testing system and get more budget money.
My son and daughter are barraged with homework and it’s all focused on improving test scores.
Kids now are over-scheduled, overworked, entitled little SOBs and we’re pretty much standing by and watching it happen. I still don’t get how we spend so much money on education and get so little in return. As recently as the 1960s, California’s schools were the envy of the world. WTF happened?
