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conundrum
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21 Jun 2012, 3:41 pm

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/freakonom ... 15497.html

This left me shaking my head. What do you guys think?


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Blownmind
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21 Jun 2012, 4:06 pm

conundrum wrote:
This left me shaking my head.

Why? It all seems very logical to me.

conundrum wrote:
What do you guys think?

If you compare it to a real scenario, it all makes sense.
To know that the christmas bonus won't be there if you don't meet your yearly quota, will motivate you to work alot harder in november/december than you would knowing the same thing in may/june. It all seems very logic. Faster reward means bigger motivation. Bigger bonus will make you work even harder. People count on their bonus to buy nicer christmas presents, and will work hard to avoid losing that privilege.

What I do find weird is that they have to research it when it is already commonly used(eg. x-mas bonus etc.). Perhaps thats why you shook your head?


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visagrunt
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21 Jun 2012, 4:31 pm

What has you shaking your head? Is it that you disbelieve the results? Or do you believe the results and you are disappointed to find that children are heavily motivated by the size and immediacy of the reward?


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21 Jun 2012, 4:44 pm

Why not give them assignments worth doing instead, instead of mudane tasks you have to resort to such motivation for. I mean fact of the matter is standardized tests are largly useless in my opinion. All it shows is you can take in and regurgitate information, one of the points I agreed with my rather right wing english teacher on, obviously we kind of clashed politically but he was still one of my favorite teachers because he was a good teacher.


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1000Knives
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21 Jun 2012, 4:48 pm

It's not unbelievable at all, people are motivated much more by immediate goals than vague unsure goals of the future. That's why people start and continue smoking. In the short term it's very gratifying, and the future results of it are variable in their negative effects and when they'll come.

That said, the entire US educational system sucks, and is pretty much just a prison for kids. It's nothing like being an adult working, as adults get to choose where they work, and if their boss does something they don't like, they can tell the boss to shove off and just leave the company. Also, you're not penalized for not working in this country, in fact you can get unemployment benefits quite easily. School on the other hand, if you don't like where you go to school, as a child you're utterly powerless to change it, and if you skip school, you go to juvie, not like adults who don't go to work. That's the drawback of compulsory education, you have a bunch of kids who simply don't wanna be there, and now they've finally figured out that kids will perform well if they're paid to be in the place they're forced to sit for 6 hours a day.

But yeah, paying people is generally the easiest way to get them to do things they don't care about/wanna do.



conundrum
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21 Jun 2012, 5:17 pm

I was "shaking my head" because we've gotten to the point where we have to pay kids to perform well in school--not the way it was done (immediate vs. long-term rewards makes sense to me too).

Sweetleaf wrote:
Why not give them assignments worth doing instead, instead of mudane tasks you have to resort to such motivation for. I mean fact of the matter is standardized tests are largly useless in my opinion.


That's what I was getting at.

1000Knives wrote:
That said, the entire US educational system sucks, and is pretty much just a prison for kids....That's the drawback of compulsory education, you have a bunch of kids who simply don't wanna be there, and now they've finally figured out that kids will perform well if they're paid to be in the place they're forced to sit for 6 hours a day.

But yeah, paying people is generally the easiest way to get them to do things they don't care about/wanna do.


This too. It's just a sad state of affairs when, not only has this become "necessary", the people who have figured out the "best" way to do this talk about it like it's no big deal that this is what "education" has been reduced to.


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1000Knives
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21 Jun 2012, 5:44 pm

Another thing, too, it's Chicago, it's got the whole crappy "hood" culture going on ruining everything. Let me show you an excerpt of people talking about my home state and what is happening in elementary school there...

Quote:
I’m leaving this state real soon thank gos i’m pulling my son out of norwalk school on the first day of school my son said the teacher asked the students what they wanted to be when they grew up ( If that ever happens). My son said most of his class mates wanted to be football players or gangsters i can see football but gangsters? every year my son goes back to school it’s the same thing most want to be gangsters or football players, WHAT ARE THE PARENTS TEACHING THESE KIDS? and the teacher never once questioned why some wanted to be gangsters. my son was always the intelligent one in class the rest were wiggers and punks he told the teacher he wanted to be a directer for movies I’m moving out of this state and put my son in a real school private school away from the scum and idiots of CT. people’s kids. And put him in a school where he will be in a environment where he’s not surrounded by punks and low life rich kids snobs that can’t get a life.


This goes back to what Bill Cosby talked about that everyone got mad at him about, his whole speech. http://www.eightcitiesmap.com/transcript_bc.htm
Quote:
Brown Versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We've got to take the neighborhood back (clapping). We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. (laughter) It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. “Why you ain't where you is go, ra,” I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk (laughter). Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with “why you ain't...” You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this. Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.


So as for standardized tests, schools are being catered to the kids who wanna be football players and gangsters, and not to people who want to learn stuff, and the football players and gangster kids could care less about school, so it's useless to cater it to them, then the people who want to learn stuff end up not caring about school as it's entirely useless to them.



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22 Jun 2012, 1:53 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:
Why not give them assignments worth doing instead, instead of mudane tasks you have to resort to such motivation for. I mean fact of the matter is standardized tests are largly useless in my opinion. All it shows is you can take in and regurgitate information, one of the points I agreed with my rather right wing english teacher on, obviously we kind of clashed politically but he was still one of my favorite teachers because he was a good teacher.


My colleagues and I have a saying: "Every job has it's share of photocopying."

Life is full of mundane tasks. Sometimes we simply have to get down to it and do the things that we dislike doing. Now that's not to say that this pedagogical approach is necessary best or even effective. But I think it's wrong to criticize school tasks as mundane. We all have lots of mundane things to do, and one of the things we should be teaching children is that mundane tasks are just as important as the fun tasks.


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