to get your kids to do well in school you would be creating a bigger problem than what currently exists. Yes the reward system can help but not if a student doesn't want to learn. Understand this. Parents must teach their children that school and education are theirs and nobody else's. What they are taught will prepare them for the future. It's something no person can take away from them. If your child doesn't believe it then you must look at your parenting skills. When a kid sees a drug dealer or pimp ride by in a $60,000 car you should show them someone who attended college driving a $60,000 car. What is even better is if the child accepts that a car is just a car. Appreciation should be focused on the ability to move around easier rather than boosting self esteem. You can thank television for teaching the mad message of today. Commercials are the killer. Now even the drug companies have jumped in. Get more involved.

I've never seen a drug dealer or pimp with a $60,000 car.

OK, maybe "fake" drug dealers or pimps (rappers), but I don't think that real drug-dealing or pimping is nearly as lucrative as you suggest.

Now, lawyers and doctors, OTOH, can afford a $60,000 car.

I agree that a monetary reward is a bad idea and that for a student to want to learn, her parents must instil that in her. But I also believe that our public school teachers need to better foster an appreciation for learning. They need to teach their subject material in a way that makes it relevant to the students' lives and experiences, whether it's math, science, english, or history. A student needs to feel some sort of real-life connection to what she's learning or else it's just a bunch of facts she must memorize to pass a test. For true learning to take place, relevance is key and that alone is plenty. A reward would not be necessary, as we know that rewards are simply incentives for a person to do what she wouldn't otherwise. All kids have an interest in their own life experiences, so why not draw on those to teach children?

I don't know where you live but where I live I see lots of dealers who drive lexuses and Mercedes. And I know that the kids at the afterschool program my wife runs are affected by that. You can look at the whole problem as an economic maximization strategy for the kids. They know about basically four options:

1. Become a professional (lawyer, doctor, etc.)

2. Become a professional athlete if you are a boy or a singer if you are a girl.

3. Work a dead end low pay low skill job like my mom or dad.

4. Do something illegal, dangerous and lucrative.

If you ask them their plan they will all say number two or if you are lucky they will say number one. However none of them actually believe that either of those are going to actually happen. So realistically they look at three and four and many choose four because noone wants to do menial labor for peanuts until they can collect a social security check. So they don't try in school because it has no relevance and often their teacher is lazy or discouraged and either way completely uninspiring because she is just waiting to pension out and can't be fired. This is the cluster f we are in. So if we can encourage kids to perform in the short term so they can perhaps succeed in the long run I'm all for it.

I've never seen a drug dealer with a 60,000 dollar car either but I've seen them with the latest clothes, the coolest cell phone, the brightest jewelry, the biggest dog and the most pocket change. Our world runs on money. Why not start kids out early learning that the harder and smarter they work the more money they will get?

This is an attempt to increase incentives for kids to learn. It's fine and dandy to talk about learning for learning's sake, but where has that got us? Why have 'punishments' for not learning and no incentives for learning. Plus, it lowers the opportunity costs of education for a lot of kids. They know that they can be making money working at McDonalds or as a drug dealer, but if they get incentives to learn, the other options are no longer attractive so they are more likely to stay in school.