shmmeee
Well-Known Member
It does because the kids then play the game, they know if they act up and then stop for a couple of days they will be rewarded for it.
What incentive is there for a kid to push themselves for no reward when there's kids being rewarded because they haven't shit themselves that day?
I’m not sure it does work like that having seen it up close TBH. If most of these kids had that level of forward planning and self control they wouldn’t be trouble kids in the first place.
Slight aside: do you know about the marshmallow experiment and it’s predictive power for future success? Kids that can defer gratification tend to do much better than those that can’t.
I do agree overall, just not convinced it meets the original criteria of “rewarding failure”. Usually it’s bollocks about “participation prizes” which is utter nonsense.
Reward structures in school don’t work. But then you’ve created a system where schools can’t let kids fail and learn a lesson from it so they all end up spoon fed. One of the many reasons I left teaching as it didn’t seem to actually be tackling the issues rather than fluffing the numbers to get through the year.