Grades – To Bribe, Or Not To Bribe?

Imagine you’re back in school and it’s report day. Would your grades have been higher if you were promised R50 for every A or an Xbox game or day to the spa for earning top grades? Bribes can do one of two things – backfire badly and reduce a student’s ability to realise they have control over their academic success or give them a shove in the right direction to be a major success and earn some well-deserved cash in the workplace one day!.

The long-running issue of rewarding children for good grades with money or material goods always seem to surface. In a Wall Street Journal column, a mom concedes to bribing her four daughters with outings and objects of desire, though not cash, for all A’s or “relative improvement.” And we all know ‘relative improvement’ means Top 10 academic performance in the world of competitive parents.

“It would of course be best if all children (and adults) could be motivated by an innate drive for high achievement and a thirst for knowledge,” writes Demetria Gallegos, community editor for WSJ.com

“But I also believe that it’s easier to accomplish good grades after experiencing them,” she wrote. “Fake it until you make it. The excitement and adrenaline of success are addictive and if you get to experience it, whatever the motivation, you’re inclined to seek it again.”

Contrary to her beliefs, a lot of people would refer to bribery as a super bad bargain. Most people believe that children must value education and not be corrupted and led into temtation. When it comes to most students, educational psychologist and TODAY contributor Michele Borba agrees that bribery is not the answer and she sees the tangible rewards as a short-term solution that will backfire.

“Most of the research says it doesn’t work,” Borba says. “It has short-term gain but long-term pain. “It will backfire on the love of the subject, the internal motivation and creativity,” she said. “That love of learning goes out, and instead what the child loves is cash and not the subject of the learning.”

Borba says bribes can reduce students’ abilities to realize they have control over their academic success and that is crucial because kids are the ones who are most responsible for motivating themselves. “That’s the secret,” Borba says. “To help your child learn without you.”

Still, she says, rewards may help kids who are having trouble in school. So, if your kid is struggling a nudge in the right direction with a reward might just give them the boost they need to be motivated and study harder for their success.

But to each parent his own – every child has a unique personality and is raised a certain way. Just make sure you equip your child with the right tools and right ways of motivation that they don’t end up having a nervous breakdown when they enter the daunting thing called being an adult.