Monday, June 8, 2009

Big Gains for Paying Kids to Do Well

See this article.

To be completely non-PC, I think this is actually a good idea. As Alexander Sidorkin argues (paraphrasing badly from my memory of some of the articles this book is based on) in many places, especially in low-income schools focused on test prep, education is simply a form of forced labor. (It's no accident that you often have to look twice to figure out whether a building is either a school or a prison.)

Okay, so let's pay them for it. Let's stop pretending we know how to make low income schools feel less like prison or a child-labor sweatshop. At least child-laborers get paid.

(If it's wonderful constructivist learning, well, then we don't need to pay them).

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