Paying for attendance teaches that learning is not worth doing for itself

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that a payment does not simply add a reason to attend; it changes what attending means. Once a child is paid for being in class, the activity is recast as a job done for someone else's benefit at an agreed rate. The question in the pupil's mind shifts from what the lesson is for to whether the rate is worth the trouble, and a question of that shape invites exactly the responses employees give: doing the minimum that qualifies, negotiating for more, and stopping when the payment stops. On this view the incentive succeeds at the cost of the attitude schooling depends on. The argument rests on a pattern proponents take to be well established in ordinary experience: paying someone for something they were previously doing willingly tends to displace the original motive rather than adding to it. A child who reads because stories are interesting, and is then paid per book, acquires a reason to count pages. Afterwards the reading does not revert to what it was, because the activity has been reclassified in the child's own mind as work. Proponents argue that this is the most serious risk of paying for school: not that it fails, but that it works while quietly removing the only motive that lasts. Defenders of the position stress what they take to be the goal. Schooling is supposed to leave behind someone who will keep learning when nobody is watching or paying, through a working life in which both the supervision and the payments are gone. An approach that produces attendance now by making learning contingent on money, they argue, undermines that end even where the attendance figures improve. On this account children should not be paid to go to school, because the payment teaches the one lesson schooling cannot afford to teach.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics answer that this assumes an interest that is often not there to be displaced. A child kept at home to work, or sitting in a class they have long since given up on, has no intrinsic motivation for the payment to crowd out, so the risk described applies mainly to pupils who were never the target. They also argue that motives do not work as a fixed quantity: people routinely come to value things they first did for other reasons, and a pupil who attends for money may discover something worth staying for. Others point out that schooling is already full of extrinsic pressure, from grades to league tables to the threat of sanctions on parents, which makes singling out cash hard to justify.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Critics object that schooling is already full of extrinsic pressure, from grades to sanctions on parents, so a payment does not introduce the reclassification described. [Rejecting P2] They argue the displacement effect presupposes an interest that is often not there, since the pupils targeted had already disengaged. [Rejecting P3] They reply that people frequently come to value things they first did for other reasons, so attending for money is compatible with learning to value learning. [Rejecting C] They conclude that the risk applies mainly to pupils who were never the target of the policy.