Topic 3: Incentives to Attend School

  Schools all over the United States strive to obey the "no child left behind" act. The schools are even offering things like free laptops or a possible car for the near perfect attendants students. The schools shown in the videos were mostly schools in which the show up rate everyday is typically lower, which means many kids are cutting class to either work for the family, or just slacking off. In the video clip, I saw argument that these kids are being offered to be at school, but not necessarily being interested in it. These incentives are just materialistic things to keep the kids in school, while they still have absolutely no interest in it, they are just there for the possible chance of receiving a laptop or a car. I think this argument is very true, I believe that these kids turns out towards the end, to just be there, everyday, just so the attendants record will look perfect, so they can get the car that they wanted. In big schools like the schools shown, I believe that rewards should work the best, due to the vast amount of students, and the school cannot keep an eye on everyone, so the reward naturally draws the students cutting class in, whereas the punishment, will simply be ignored. In my school however, a small school like PAS, punishment is the incentive. We all don't want to be punished by Ms.Pamela, therefore we try our best, avoid speaking Chinese, just so we will not have to get in trouble and be sent to her office, avoid being locked out so we won't be sent home.  I believe that the goals of the schools, were just simply get kids to attend school, whereas for our school, we want our students to be responsible, so it is either you come on time or you get locked out. I believe both schools does a good job with the incentives, both rewards and punishment, and both works for the given circumstances. I believe that for a small school like PAS, where everyone is focused and more academic oriented, the punishment idea works perfectly, also being in an Asian culture. In a big school in the videos, the rewards work too because it is a popular interest for all the students to get a car, or a new lap top just by showing up for class.