Tonight I was watching the NBC Nightly News when they did a segment on a school district in Washington, D.C. that was paying its students for good behavior and good grades. The lady who was heading up the push for this program said that her school at one point had only 8% of it’s eighth grade students on level with their math classes. Really? Only 8% and now you’re going to pay them so that they have an incentive to do better in school?
Here is my two cents on this subject. Since when has the idea of being able to get a job and live life due to doing well in school become not enough to encourage students? When did passing all of your classes become less important than video games and Nike Shoes? Where did these students get the idea that they can not work in school and still expect to be a Michael Jordan or a Julia Roberts?
I think once those questions are answered, then this school system can determine what they NEED to do, not what they can do, to solve this educational problem. When parents finally see, and take the initiative to change, their students lifestyles to focus on what is required of them in school, then things can change without having to dangle governmental money in front of their faces.
What I think needs to be done is that these kids need to see, on a daily basis, what will become of them if they don’t do well in school. They need to be aware of how important it is now days to have a minimum of a high school diploma, and be reminded of that every time they walk in the classroom.
A lot of the kids who aren’t doing well, or have a lower comprehension rate, are the result of family negligence. That is sad to me. Families don’t pay enough attention to their kids to help give them a foot-hole to do well in school. Instead, these kids are more focused on the social aspect of school and making an impression on those they spend their free time with. How about instead of being popular because you got a Play Station 3 for your birthday, you’re popular because you earned scholarship money for college because of your hard work in class. How many NFL players are drafted into the league with no high school diploma or only a GED?
Our nation needs to focus on primary education and what changes need to be made so that our posterity can succeed. We don’t need to entice them with monetary gain, but instead a way to provide for their family and the ability to be what they want to be. Schools should never have only 8% of their students on par with the required material. Never. People all over the world try so hard to do well in school so that they can come study HERE! People sacrifice so much to be able to come to the United States so that they can be what they have always dreamt, but somehow our nation is full of so many students who just want to get through whats required in any way they can, even if it is by the seat of their pants.
Posted by Nameless on November 15, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I think the money is a great way considering the way our society operates. These kids live in a entitlement society, where they think everything in the world is theirs to have without any work or sweat. The parent (or rather the entire generation) is what produced this. We developed a country of complete consumerism, we don’t create anything, and we like to shove our work off to foreigners.
80 years ago most people didn’t go to school, today everyone is expected to go to college. Not everyone grows up in a family that produces kids with the motivation, desire, or even the need to attend a 4-year institution. The problem with our society is we expect something of kids today (to attend college, get a salary job, and raise kids in the suburbs); when the suburbs are continuously shrinking, college can’t even maintain everyone it admits, and there are only so many salary jobs out there. Now we have a large segment of ‘working-class’ teens and young-adults who are growing up in a society that no longer needs them. They’re jobs have been shipped over-seas or filled by foreign workers who are more motivated to come to this country to build a life for their children and grandchildren.
These young-adults have been raised in a society that has told them they get it all. They get the toys, the games, the cars, the best food, the college education, the big house, the beautiful spouse. What it forgot to mention was that they have to work for all of this (especially the latter half). The real tragedy is such a nation is nothing but a figment of our imaginations, there has to be the lower-rung of society.. its just sad to see these people being expected of something they can never achieve, instead of being directed into a work-force that fits their capabilities we’ve blown their ego’s up to the size of hollywood stars and put them in a position to want the unattainable.