Paying Kids To Do Schoolwork

I think that the standard schooling system could be a lot better. This is for two main reasons:It’s slow.[1]It limits agency.[2]This isn’t to blame the people who work in schools — for the most part they do a really good job with what they’re given. I just think that we can provide children with a much better experience — and it mostly comes down to motivation.Learning takes effort — and while learning is often enjoyable, there are innevitably certain tasks/subjects which students will dislike, but which are nonetheless very useful. The method that standard schooling uses to motivate its students is mostly through threat of punishment (having to do more work, notifying parents of poor performance), whereas the reward for doing well is mostly just praise.I think that this method is missing a big component: actual rewards.And the most straightforward way to accomplish this is: pay kids to do schoolwork.It doesn’t, and shouldn’t, be a lot of money by adult standards. Their daily earning potential in dollars can be something like their grade level divided by 2 ($0.5/day for grade 1, $6/day for grade 12). They can then use their money to buy things from you like snacks, toys, et cetera.[3]A day’s worth of schoolwork for a 10 year old could look something like this:Write a short story ($0.25)Complete a mathematics worksheet ($0.25)Practice and perform a short piece of music ($0.25)Read a map and answer questions ($0.25)Memorise 10 new words in Spanish ($0.25)Make a simple animation ($0.25)Cook a meal ($0.25)Learn a juggling trick ($0.25)Not only does this serve as a powerful tool for incentivizing learning — by paying students to do work, we unlock a powerful tool for speeding up education: asynchronous learning.That is, instead of everyone in a classroom learning the same thing at the same time, a teacher can assign a bunch of tasks and have students complete work and progress through content at their own speed.This gives students a lot more agency over what and when the