I'm sure some, if not most of you, have heard of such a thing as intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Money is an extrinsic reward.

While it's true that most of us are focused on the extrinsic rewards of life as it appeases our physical needs, it is actually the intrinsic rewards that gives us  peace of mind and the "warm-fuzzies" that help us retain our sanity in a world of insanity. The Job Market and our work place is, or can be, such a world.

What one is taught by receiving money for every good grade is that one can expect some kind of return for a job well done. Is that true for everything in life? Hell no. In fact, sometimes the good that you do may cause bad things to happen. Then what? Where's your reward?

What happens if parents can no longer afford to give the money a child has been habittually receiving for getting good grades? Some children may be indifferent, others disappointed, but there will be a number who will react quite strongly, perhaps to a point of boycotting good grades until the reward is met.

When someone is conditioned to expect a reward for everything he/she does a good job on, he/she is bound to have a big let down, if not several, in life.

And believe it or not, it's been proven that extrinsic rewards will make light, distract you, from intrinsic rewards. When this happens, what is there to drive your motivation? Imagine that your only motivation to live is for money....

I am speaking of rather extreme cases, but that is what happens when kids are brought up to love extrinsic rewards.

Eh, not really.  I never get paid or get any gift for getting straight A's for a year, or even through a grade level (elementary school, middle school, and highschool)

well, it's true if you get a job.

Bravo on the response

Thats when parents have to further analyze the situation. Of course parents should reinforce good behavior and a job well done with some sort of 'reward,' whether it be cash or a simple, "I'm proud of you," or else a job well done will go unrecognized (as it does many times in life).

A parent's perspective from the shortterm standpoint (so my mother tells me) is that a child gets so caught up in doing a good job and expecting a reward that when the reward is taken away and the good job continues, then they'll have acquired the necessary work ethic to make it in life.

Conversely, it could blow up in parents faces (as you mentioned earlier), with children being so ungrateful to expect a reward for doing a good job. Mipadi seemed to be implying that a good job doesn't warrant a financial reward in the real world. Financially, it may not.

It also all depends on the child and how they'll deal with such a thing. Some children may miss the point entirely and just do work because they expect something. Others will understand the importance of working hard and doing a good job and maybe, just maybe, they'll have an acquired work ethic.

So you're saying that everyone who does their job well gets paid very well, and everyone who does their job poorly gets paid poorly?

I don't really think that's always the case at all.

well, it is a bit of a generalization... 

anyways;  fae just dominated this debate.  there's not much else to say, except...

if the chidren randomly got rewards for getting good grades. i think that would work somewhat...

First, thank you. You humble me since I think you're a great debator yourself.
Yes, I've taken into account that different children will react in different ways. I've also talk to my mother about this problem of rewarding children many times because she believes, to my persistent denial, that she may not live to teach me such things later. She says what works best with raising me may not work with raising my own children, a tactic I considered using on my future children since coming of age.

The sad thing that we all have to realize is that not all parents are as attentive to their children, and so the case may be that they will not know what 'works' and what doesn't. These said parents will feed their kids all the money they can and when they can't, society (that's the rest of us) have to put up with the consequences. Such consequences may be trivial or they may be extreme.

So, I still believe that the best way to go about this is mixing up instrinsic and extrinsic rewards but put more weight into the intrinsic ones. If the child responds negatively, highly unlikely, then we may do a switcheroo and see how that works. However, to rid the child's education of the higher rewards in life altogether is to condition him/her to a life of base physical, tangible needs. No better than an animal. A walking, talking animal.

Again, pretty extreme, but there are pretty extreme people in our society.

anyways; fae just dominated this debate.

Pyschological principle of learning: a person (or animal) learns fastest when given a constant reward, but the learning goes away almost as soon as the reward is removed; a person (or animal) takes longer to learn a behavior when the reward is random, but the imprinting lasts longer.

Whats a scientific principle if its only partly true?

Who said it was only partly true?

The principle states that once the reward is taken away, the learning stops.

How true is that? Its partly true because such a broadly vauge theory is not applicable for every situation. So you're telling me that if I don't get rewarded, I won't learn? That sounds like garbage to me.

I think you misunderstand learn in this case. I mean learn as in a behavior, not learn as in to get good grades.

A general psychological principle is that a human (or animal) learns a behavior fastest when the reward is constant, but best when the reward is random.

Apply this to rewarding a child for good grades. If you reward a child every time, he will quickly learn that if he gets an A, he will get a reward, and thus try to get A's; but when you stop giving him a reward, he will quickly stop getting A's. Conversely, if you reward a child randomly for getting A's, he will take longer to realize that getting A's is rewarded; however, if you were to stop giving a reward, it would take longer for the child to stop trying to get A's.

Personally, I feel as though a child should be encouraged from a young age to be intrinsically motivated to succeed.

I suppose it doesn't work in all cases, but it's not as though I devised that principle. It's a pretty standard principle of classical conditioning.

You're only saying it's stupid because you don't get it.
JEALOUS LOL

Heh. My friends parents bribed her saying if she gets all A's they bought her a laptop. she did. and now she's rubbing it in my face about how i don't get $$ or anything for my grades [which are great  ]. It's quite annoying for us.

But when they get out in the real world and they have to fend for themselves, who's going to bribe them to do whatever?

It's bribery, and i think that is the stupidiest thing ever. Right next to black mail and tons of other things.

you say bribery and blackmail like they're bad things...