This Saturday 4th April 8-9 PM on It’s A Question Of Balance with Ruth Copland we consider ‘Should Children Be Paid To Learn?’ According to research papers quoted in Education Week and the Journal of Human Resources a dozen states in America have offered financial incentive programmes to students ranging from students being paid to read to receiving in some instances hundreds of dollars for good grades. But should children be paid to learn? Michael Sandel in his book What Money Can’t Buy states that economic reasoning suggests that two incentives should work better than one but there is also the possibility that the monetary incentive will undermine the intrinsic one leading to less reading over time. Is there any harm in offering children financial incentives if it gets them to do the work? What life lessons do you think children might learn from being offered money to read, or get better grades, rather than learning to motivate themselves? Could it be teaching them that studying is a chore? Or would they perhaps gain an intrinsic love of reading, for example, as a by-product of learning for pay?
What do you think? Ruth Copland gets the views of people in the local area for our Out and About feature. Join us on Saturday 8-9 PM! For more info on the show and to hear past shows visit www.itsaquestionofbalance.com
