Why Incentives Can Create an Evolutionary Leap in Learning
Just as all students come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors, so do their cultural backgrounds. After 45 years in teaching and interacting with students, patterns in learning and desired goals of life after graduation come into focus – and culture plays a large part in these desires. Doubt this observation? Just think of the many ethnic comedians who say, “We do/don’t play this sport” or “If you’re having trouble with math, just ask the Asian student for help.”
It seems that many recent immigrants to America have an idea of what they want to do whether it’s owning/working in a nail salon, convenience store, computer technology, gardening, housekeeping, medicine, etc. By choice, certain cultural groups have a higher percentage of participants in certain endeavors than others. Oddly enough, I’ve never heard of a young student ever say, “I want to be a math teacher!” Self-preservation apparently comes at an early age!
No more of cultural dominance is evident than in our National Spelling Bee – won 18
times in the past 20 years by Indian Americans! In the 2017 Scripps Bee, they represented 13 of the 15 finalists and the winner was a 6th grader from India! The secret to their success: The days, weeks and years of hard work – and family support. Sound familiar? Culture, whatever is important to a group, is stressed to the point of obsession. For the Indian population, among many, achievement brings honor to the family. It motivates success.
For most of us, the lure of cash is more than enough to get people’s attention. With every new sports season, new earnings records are set which just entices a population more. In basketball alone, the Black population dominates. 81% of the NBA is Black compared to a little more than 13% of the country’s population. If you’re Black, this sounds great and puts you in front of the line to make millions. Concentrate onimproving every day and soon you’ll be rich. Perfect logic you think. But many people of color have the same idea.
If you also studied a little math along with hours of practicing basketball, you would find out that if you were a great basketball player in high school, your chance of making the pros is .03%. About 3 in 10,000! That’s like getting dealt four of a kind in poker! Sure, the greats in many sports make big money, but it’s not likely. Plus, if you play hard, you’re only one injury away from your career being over in a moment – and then what? A lifetime of telling stories of how great you used to be won’t pay the rent.
If those lucky enough to get a “free ride” to college used the opportunity to learn business, finance or some other area that appeals to them as a fallback just in case, they would still have options to earn a good living. Just look at Magic Johnson. He made a ton in basketball and afterwards he became a very successful businessman!
Motivation comes in all forms and American greatness has been founded on achievement and reasons to be proud of the effort for being worthwhile. This is where
education has failed us. Teachers’ idealism may bring us to the classroom, but the lack of compensation for a superior effort kills our spirit. To compensate, we tutor to supplement our earnings. There are two things that motivate teachers – financial and emotional compensation. If the best we get emotionally is a “satisfactory” rating for less-than-satisfactory pay, we leave after around 14 years of experience and working about 53 hours a week.
That’s why EXCL in Education will be based on incentives. For teachers, they’ll receive merit pay proportional to how well their distance learning students perform. When teachers are in competition for students who really want to learn, the quality of lessons will become more dynamic, articulate and interesting. They will do a lot better job of inspiring students to learn.
Similarly, students will be able to choose their teachers based on their ability to make topics that had been difficult, now easy. AND we will help guide them into finding the best teachers compatible with their learning and allow them to qualify to win prizes of value for reaching educational objectives among other incentives. No more waiting 10 years to be rewarded.
Incentives will allow us to bring the best teaching to confused students to establish a base of learning from which to build successes. What they choose to do with it could be to further their learning, gain employment, or further their application of skills in a desired trade.
The possibilities become endless with incentivized learning while optimizing learning with teacher choice.