Knock me down with a feather – the GCSE and A level results have improved again.

But would grades be even higher if schools dished out money to pupils who achieved good results? In 2009, Harvard Economist Roland Fryer Jr carried out a controversial study to find out. Results were mixed, but they generally suggested that, yes, financial incentives did make a difference.

However, despite the apparently positive results, Fryer received death threats for his efforts. While he argued that children needed an incentive to make them learn, others, including many psychologists, argued, and still do, that children must be taught to learn for the love of it.

But if children aren’t enjoying learning, is it ever a good idea to reward them for it?

Suspicious minds

Imagine being at Alton Towers when an official comes over and offers to pay you to go on a new ride. The money sounds attractive, but why are they paying you? Is the ride unsafe? Are you some kind of human guinea pig?

Children are no different. If they are paid to learn, they will grow to regard it as negative, as a chore to be done solely in order to get a reward.

When, after arbitrary incentives have dried up, a child is presented with a book, will he read it? Not if no one’s paying, or at least not without feeling resentful. It’s an immediate solution that doesn’t work in the long term.

So should we be aiming for the higher, if less easily measurable, goal of instilling the love of learning in young people? I think there may be a third way.

Related goals

Learning is wonderful in and of itself. Maths can be beautiful, PE can be exhilarating, literature can be mind-expanding, music can be moving. A teacher who is passionate about what they’re teaching can convey this in such a way as to instil a love of the subject into the child for the rest of their life.

But it won’t work for everyone. Human as we are, we often need the kick-start of an incentive to get off our backsides.

My suggestion is that we consider making all incentives relate to the subject being learned. I believe the reason that financial rewards are ultimately unlikely to work is because they’re arbitrary.

However, related incentives encourage good results, whilst also giving children a reason to enjoy the learning experience. For example, I remember studying hard to learn Spanish in preparation for a youth group holiday to Barcelona.

Thousands of young people up and down the country are working extra hard at their sports skills in preparation for next year, when England hosts the 2012 Olympics.

Jesus, himself, also encouraged those around him, “If you have ears, then listen”, not just for the building up of knowledge, but of wisdom in his hearers. And he practiced what he preached, spending hours in the synagogue, learning and discussing the things of God.

Role models

So let’s ditch the financial incentives and concentrate on giving our children opportunities to try new things. And more than this, model to them, through our own lives, that discovering more about the world is intrinsically interesting, and can also be used for good purposes.

And perhaps, if someone fancies carrying out another study on the subject, how about this: Turn it round and make the children pay (pennies, not some government funding exercise) towards their education. Perhaps that would make them value it – it does in poorer countries. Just a thought.