Reply to Silver Spring's Eastern Middle School gets slammed for rewarding good students

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Caste system, pah-lease! [b]This is good training for real life. Your boss will not reward you for working hard. Your boss rewards you for success, achievement and accomplishment.[/b] The best students got pizza, soda, a game room and some dancing. The B and C students got soda as a reward. Other student got to come later[/quote]

[b]This would be a good motto for Ayn Rand Middle School. I, on the other hand, think there can be a more progressive and nurturing approach for 12 year old children[/b].[/quote]

I agree.  Just because the adult world is harsh and cruel doesn't mean we want to mimic that for children.  In fact, I would hope that we educate our children in such a way that they will create a better environment as adults, one that isn't "the ends justify the means."  I feel in the adult world now, people get rewarded even when their accomplishment is based on back-stabbing, cheating, undermining others.  Even though success and accomplishment are important in the workplace, there should still be a sense of fairness and cooperation.  After all, very RARELY is an accomplishment or success just attributable to the efforts of one person.  My experience has been that usually a lot of people's hard work contributed to the success, but the boss only rewards the one who self-promotes the most or gets the most visibility.

Everyone says that children are our future, and yet people are insistent on raising children in such a way as they will conform to the way the world is now.  If we truly believe children are our future, then we should raise them in such a way that they will transform the world to make it better, not just keep in motion all of the old problems and nastiness.

It's about balance.  You can encourage success and accomplishment without shutting out students who work hard but don't necessarily reach the same goals.  It isn't about giving an award to everyone.  It's about setting up values.  The value that we want to instill isn't "getting an A."  The value we want to instill is studying and working hard so that you get the best grade possible.  Believe it or not, some kids get As easily.  They didn't work hard.  Other kids study and study and still can't get an A.  If they see that their hard work not only doesn't get them an A but also means they're excluded, then they give up.  And that is a bigger problem in school.  I knew people in high school who had labeled themselves in such a way that they gave up, because they felt like even when they studied hard, they still didn't do as well.

I've also known people for whom As came easily growing up.  they never had to work hard.  They actually haven't done well as adults because they learned that they could be lazy and still be praised and rewarded.  All the praise they got from their teachers didn't serve them well because it was praise for a result, a result that came naturally to them.  [/quote]

I think this is well said. I also think it's all kinds of wrong to reward children with food (and not unimportantly, it Montgomery county schools has a policy that forbids it.)[/quote]

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