<p>This is just a thought I have in regards to all the recent threads about districts/schools offering cash incentives or requiring kids to do well in academics whether that's standardized testing, applying to college, or getting good grades. </p>
<p>This kind of bribing flies in the face of the psychology of motivation. If one is externally rewarded for doing some action, then one's interest in doing said action when there is no external incentive decreases. If one is internally motivated(interest), then that's a different story. </p>
<p>I run with a group of teens that are basically the high achievers. We're all high scorers on standardized testing. None of us in our upbringing have ever been given 'incentives' to do what we did. Looking back, bribing me would've undone me. Many of the rest of my friends agree. We all score high on, for example, reading because we all read a lot--not just fiction books, but in topics we're interested in. I'm drawn to health and science naturally, and make it a habit to read the health&science section of newspapers and newsmagazines daily. I have another friend who is drawn to math. He's sort of obsessed. He reads books on math. In my younger childhood, I would check out stacks of books at the library at the beg. of the summer, read them through, return, then get more. We was never rewarded for any of it---we read to glean information. This has given us a high reading speed and increased reading comprehension--we didn't have to take any prep classes or do any prep for the verbal sections of the SAT I or the SAT II Lit---because we had been unintentionally prepping for more than a decade. </p>
<p>My mother didn't specifically praise me for it or tell me that it was good that I was doing it or give me any money. Neither did any of the parents of the high achievers I know. Doing these things was never portrayed as something that one would normally not want to do unless given money. If my parents had tried to bribe me to read, then I'm pretty sure that I would've stopped reading when the incentive stopped. </p>
<p>In my opinion, which you might diagree with, the best way to increase academic performance in kids later in life is to try to instill an interest in learning and READING really early in life. Don't tell a kid "good job" for reading that chapter book---help him find another one with a story he'll also find amusing. Don't give a kid a sticker for reading or an ice cream cone. Make reading itself the reward. Make reading a vehicle through which to learn about topics the child is interested in. Does the child like horses? Provide all the literature on horses. Does the child like aeroplanes? Stories related to flying and being a pilot it is. Move up, challenge the kid, make it interesting. Don't bore them with books on topics they're not interested in---learning on those topics can come later. There's such a strong push for children to always be reading fiction, but perhaps there should be an equal push to nonfiction on topics that interest them. Back to the horse story---maybe a few fiction books about horses(fiction), but then a book about how horses work(anatomy, Science!), or the history of horses(history). Learn about the different breeds--and perhaps some of the numerical differences between them(size, weight, numbers!--and still science with classification.) It's research skills in disguise!</p>
<p>In regards to standardized testing, it'd be better to address why kids aren't scoring high---they aren't taking the test seriously or they aren't prepared? How does a 4th grader "study" for a standardized test anyway? One area that I obviously think needs addressing is reading. All the subjects (except math at the lower levels) require reading skills---to read that textbook or do well on that test (being able to read the questions on a standardized test rapidly does wonders to your score!---I know a lot of kids who run out of time taking tests simply because of the time it takes them to read the question and think a bit). Many teens I know hate reading because they're slow at it and that's frustrating to them---sure, laziness, but laziness in face of difficulty. How can one expect them to do well in school and eventually college if they hate and avoid reading? One of my parents is a foreigner and even though said parent is intelligent and was a very good scholar in said parent's original country, hasn't been able to help me with school for several years because the english has become too advanced---and the problem I see at school is that many of my classmates aren't much better at English than she is. Yet we wonder why they don't do well...</p>
<p>Feel free to disagree, this was just a thought.</p>