A school district in central Ohio is trying a new kind of incentive pay - for students. In return for doing well on annual exams, each student can earn up to $100. And in schools near Miami, students can win pizza parties, tickets to the prom, and even iPods in exchange for passing scores on their new state science exams. Proponents of these kinds of incentives maintain that this is one way to encourage academic achievement, particularly when many schools' livelihoods depend on test scores. Others argue that these are bribes, and don't encourage meaningful learning.
In an Edutopia online survey, 32 percent of voters said such incentives are harmless, produce results, and, especially for low-income, at-risk students, may provide motivation where there was none before; 69 percent disagreed, stating that such rewards don't encourage learning for learning's sake and coincide with an overemphasis on high-stakes testing. The remaining 9 percent of voters were undecided.
- www.edutopia.org
(Teachers page-a-day calendar - Tuesday 6 January 2009)
A monk asked his master the classic question: "What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the west?"
The master replied: "No idea whatever in this."
Later, learning of the exchange, Ch'i-an commented: "Two corpses in one coffin."
- Zen mondo
(Zen page-a-day calendar - Saturday 8 November 2008)
If I can get out of the way, if I can be pure enough, if I can be selfless enough, and if I can be generous and loving and caring enough to abandon what I have and my own preconceived, silly notions of what I think I am - and become truly who in fact I am, which is really just another child of God - then the music can really use me. And therein lies my fulfillment. That's when the music starts to happen.
- John McLauchlin
(Zen page-a-day calendar - Sunday 9 November 2008)
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