Month: April 2010

I recently wrote about whether we should pay our children for good grades and our consensus was that the kids would have to do without the money.  But now Time Magazine weighs in with the research put forward by Dr. Roland Fryer of Harvard about the effects of financially rewarding – paying – schoolkids for good grades.  And after reading the article and understanding that there are good points, I still have to disagree and not solely for intellectual reasons.

The trials in question were run in four urban areas – DC, New York City, Chicago and Dallas – and to his credit, appear to be well-designed studies.  Each group in each of the target cities are inner-city students and the reality, politically correct or not, is that most are mostly underprivileged from homes that are not intact.  Each city was also tested based upon different criteria so that the results could be compared against one another as well as against the control groups.  The results were that in two cities, Dallas and DC, the results were positive with reading comprehension scores rising significantly in Dallas and multiple factors being positively affected in DC.  The results in NYC and Chicago were either mixed or to no effect.

There is one key element in the article that bears some exploration.  A common retort of critics – me included – is that kids should be taught that learning is important in and of itself and should be taught that it’s so.  But here’s the paragraph in question:

"We tend to assume that kids (and adults) know how to achieve success.  If they don’t get there, it’s for lack of effort – or talent.  Sometimes that’s true.  But a lot of the time, people are just flying blind.  John List, an economist at the University of Chicago, has noticed the disconnect in his own educational experiments.  He explains the problem to me in this way:  "I could ask you to solve a third-order linear partial differential equation," he says.  "A what?"  I ask.  "A third-order linear partial differential equation," he says.  "I could offer you a million dollars to solve it.  And you can’t do it."  …For some kids, doing better on a geometry test is like solving a third-order linear partial differential equation, no matter the incentive."

The simple reality is that in most inner cities, the welfare society created a situation in which multiple succeeding generations were raised without a real regard for the value of education and then didn’t pass it along to their own children.  One of my laws of fatherhood is the understanding that your child is a blank slate and is going to have to be taught everything; to expect them to simply figure things out is unrealistic.  The simple skills that create a successful learning environment – reading, math drills, checking homework, accountability – are absent and without these in the homes, the kids don’t have the tools necessary to pull themselves along.  Unless there’s an additional incentive that prompts them to the extra effort necessary to overcome the circumstances.

I have two other concerns about the question.  The practical question is one of sheer resources.  If this is to work, then the financial resources have to be in place to cover the costs and the fiscal reality is that the money just isn’t available to pay kids for decent grades.  Some can argue that the available money should be put towards the underprivileged kids since they don’t have the family structure and opportunities in place like those who are in suburban or rural areas.  But this leads to the other concern, which is the corrosive social message that’s sent by the government to the families who do work with their children and push for education and good grades.  Your kids won’t get the money that goes to the underprivileged kids from homes whose families don’t value what you do.  That might seem extreme and childish, but consider the catastrophic law of unintended consequences that struck after the Great Society programs of the 1960s.  Within thirty-five years, the number of fatherless inner-city children rose dramatically and the two-parent model within the inner city was literally destroyed.  Over the next several decades, how many other parents will simply say to hell with it as did so many from the Great Society years?

Which was in large part what led to this predicament.

And let me be honest.  It frustrates me, as I’m sure that it does many other parents, that those parents who don’t place the value upon education are seemingly rewarded at our expense.  So I’m in favor of further exploring the research and perhaps some other reward mechanism can be found that can be universally applied without bankrupting us further.

But otherwise, remember the Great Society debacle and just forget the whole thing.

Being a father is a full-time endeavor, one that never ceases and always changes as the kids grow.  There will be occasions when you simply don’t do well and feel real guilt about how you acted or responded to a situation.  Nobody talks about those moments and they do stay with you.  While making notes for Tackling Major Projects With Kids Around, I had to consider what I believe to be my worst moment and greatest regret as a father.

The front yard of our old house was very plain and sloped considerably in two different directions.  The only path from the sidewalk to the front porch consisted of some broken, partially covered flagstones that had been thrown in the grass by the previous owner and it was apparent that the whole front needed work.  My wife wanted a concrete walkway, with steps, that ran from porch to sidewalk in a way that best utilized the yard’s topography.  Because I spent several summers in college pouring concrete for a construction company, I took on the project myself.  I reacquainted myself with the work involved, took the necessary measurements and laid out the plans accordingly.  What I didn’t do was account for the fact that I was a stay-at-home father with three children and a hard-working spouse.  I was an idiot.

Let me tell you a little something about concrete.  It responds badly to hot weather.  You can add all of the water you want in the mixer and as soon as it’s poured, it will be as though there’s a giant invisible straw sucking out the moisture and making it impossible with which to work.  That means that the most difficult time is in the height of summer, which is about when my own project was ready to pour.

My idiocy was compounded by failing to start early enough to beat that stretch and it meant that I drove myself to get the job done, even bringing in a teenager to help with the heavy digging and pouring.  But that need to see the job done meant that I was a bastard when it came to letting the kids help and my eldest son – then a third grader – desperately wanted to help his father.

Me.

I was curt with his questions and impatient with his efforts when he tried to help.  I never verbally berated him but my looks and demeanor were clear when I thought that he was in the way and I now recall how his face looked when I brusquely ordered him to move and then complained about what had to happen to get this project moving.  The project was successfully completed but I was a true bastard in doing it.

Both my sister and I were at our father’s side when he died from lung cancer.  In the hours before his death, he was conscious and coherent while he leaned against us and labored to breathe before his body finally succumbed to the effort.  He managed to speak and I was dumbfounded when he apologized to us for his failings as a father.  His comment was, I’m sorry that I was a royal horse’s ass sometimes.  Both of us loved him dearly and considered him to be an excellent father.  Yet in his last moments, he could only reflect on those occasions when he had fallen short.

None of us are perfect.  We’re going to have some bad instances but that shouldn’t define us as failures.  What makes us failures are not acknowledging our mistakes and learning from them, and ultimately, walking away from our responsibilities as fathers.

I learned from my father’s example yet again.  But instead of waiting for my deathbed, I apologized to my now-older son last night.