Persuasive Essay: Why You Should Pay Your Children for Good Grades

Show me the money. Money is motivational. Although it is not the only motivational tool used upon employees, it is difficult to discount the fact that money is an important reason that people go to work every day. Without a regularly paid salary, few adults would continue to perform their jobs, at least not consistently, day in and day out, at a high level. This includes teachers. Yet children are expected to be equally as motivated as salaried adults when they go to school every day.

Children are often told to think of school as their job, and the use of money as a reward can underline this, providing motivation to do more than the minimum. The rationale is that the school is simply shortening the time between school performance and pay-off that has always existed (Pay for grades, 2008, p.2). According to finance blogger Khalfani-Cox (2014), even though her children are very internally motivated, offering money can be the immediate incentive that encourages them to make the extra effort to earn the A they are capable of, rather than being satisfied with a B. Performing well in school takes long-term cognitive planning. Students may lose focus midway through the semester, but consistently rewarding students with small incentives like money can encourage them to continue to invest time and effort to eventually win a much larger reward of a higher end-of-semester grade.

For less capable students, who struggle with school and inferior to their classmates, the motivation of money can be even more successful. They may struggle to compete with other students or find intellectual satisfaction in challenging material, but the reward of even earning a C might be enough to persevere, so they can eventually learn to enjoy learning and school. Money communicates that even their C is valuable. It is important to underline that this should not be framed as an either/or debate of personal satisfaction in learning versus money. Just like paid employees can gain great satisfaction from doing good work, so can students who succeed in school gain satisfaction from both work and payment. Students can be proud of their learning, their grades, and what they have learned, just as adults can be proud of their work, their performance reviews, and their salaries.

It is important to remember that students today are working more and more than ever before at school. Activities such as arts, gym, and recess have been eliminated by many schools, taking away one of the most powerful incentives to go to school for many students who are less motivated by academics (14 pros, 2019). Even students with strong work ethics and long attention spans struggle keeping focus for long hours a day, going home to do more homework, and balancing the exhaustion of extracurriculars and sometimes even additional tutoring....

…earning from outside jobs and other sources. In fact, for a child who is really struggling, a parent may suggest paying the student for higher grades rather than continuing in a job that is making a young teen too tired to properly function in school. Once again, this emphasizes the need to stress the long-term rewards of school, versus short-term incentives.

Money also serves a function of positive versus negative reinforcement. All too often, parents simply resort to negative reinforcement in the form of taking away technology, curfews, and yelling. But they offer no positive reward other than praise if the child does well, and sometimes not even that. Money is a tangible reward, and every time a childs motivation flags or the child feels discouraged, there is always the slowly growing bank account to consult as a reminder that hard work does pay off in a manifestly concrete fashion.

Of course, money is not the most important thing in life. But money is not bad. Money can be exchanged for meaningful experiences (like college), and goods and services. Rewarding children with money is not evil, especially since rewarding children for good grades is just thata reward, rather than a bribe. Finally, as Khalfani-Cox (2014) notes, it is unrealistic to expect a child or an adult to be passionate about every single task or job he or she undertakes in life. Money offers a source of transactional reward, but also a way to…