Selling Kids on School
by Suzanne Hadley Gosselin on 11/27/2007 at 12:00 PM
Last night I had dinner with my friend who's a mom. The occasion: the celebration of her 8-year-old son receiving the "challenge" spelling list this week. He'd received a perfect score on his spelling pretest and been given a harder list of words. Obviously, Ethan was pretty pumped on school. But in some places, especially poor neighborhoods, kids view school only as a burden. Newsweek looks at the measures some school districts are taking to sell education to these kids. In 2008, New York City school chief Joel Klein plans to use an advertising agency to sell school achievement through a slick multimedia campaign.
In January about 15,000 middle-schoolers from high-poverty neighborhoods will be given free cell phones. Through those phones kids will then receive taped—and perhaps even personal—messages from entertainment and sports celebrities reminding them to try their best in class. They'll be able to download "interviews" with well-to-do men and women who work as dentists, technicians, scientists and accountants and who will discuss the way they parlayed school success into financial security. Teachers will also use the phones to remind pupils about upcoming tests or an overdue homework assignment. When individuals or groups of kids improve their attendance, up their grades or display good citizenship in school, they'll be rewarded with free minutes on their phones and tickets to shows and sporting events. Kids who get phones will also be assigned mentors.
The Association of National Advertisers (who obviously have something to gain here) believe the campaign will be successful due to the sheer power of marketing. If kids are buying other messages via advertising -- such as the anti-smoking and drinking ads -- why not sell them on education as well? But some are skeptical of the overall effectiveness of such efforts.
Other experts aren't so sure. They say the personal touch—the mentors and advisers—may work better than YouTube videos and text messaging. "When it comes to young people, marketing can only do so much," says Rick Boyko, former chief creative officer for advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather and now a Virginia Commonwealth University communications professor. "These are people who have been marketed to since they day they were born. They are very sophisticated consumers. They'll know that a prerecorded message is just that: prerecorded. That it is not sincere. And it will take them about three seconds to belittle it. Kids don't need commercials. They need dialogue. They need contact. They need good information from people they can trust."
Obviously a mom who takes her son out for a celebratory dinner when he achieves a perfect spelling score does more to motivate a child toward education that a text message that says: "Did u know high school graduates earn an average of $175 more per week than high school dropouts? Get your diploma." It's unfortunate that every child doesn't have the benefit of a supportive, involved parent.
1. Jen said the following at 4:03 PM on Nov 27:
I deal with this everyday. I teach fifth grade in a country school in SC.
If anyone has any OTHER motivational tips, I am all ears. I am at the end of my rope. (The stats say almost 50% of teachers don't stay in for at least 5 years... I'm in my third year and looking for a way out...)
It's sad.
2. Andrew R. (aka Canadian Boy) said the following at 4:05 PM on Nov 27:
This is absolutely fascinating. The results are going to be interesting.
3. DannieA said the following at 6:35 PM on Nov 27:
I work in a poor title 1 area. Our last principal did raffles for a bike or ipod shuffle for kids who came to school on time during state testing week. It did work, and it unfortunately...a lot of our parents won't take a dinner out with their kids for a job well done, so we as school employees do what we can...
In fact the RSP teacher and I did a home visit today because a parent didn't want to come to school for an IEP meeting for her child...so we went.
YOu can't treat all districts and kids the same.
4. JoMK said the following at 7:02 PM on Nov 27:
I want to meet Ethan's teacher! He or she appears to be doing a great job at keeping kids both motivated and challenged.
As a new teacher I have seen firsthand the apathetic attitudes a lot of kids have towards school and education in general nowadays. The saddest part is that often teachers and administrators "give up" on kids because there seems to be no way to get through to them. I don't think the campaign will be as successful as the advertisers expect. This is just from my experiences at a pretty rough junior high school, but I think the key to getting a kid interested in school is a personal connection. A teacher whose students realize that getting an education is incredibly valuable (and lots of fun) has accomplished a great thing.
5. Adam D said the following at 9:10 PM on Nov 27:
I understand and appreciate the underlying message of trying to get poverty-line students more interested in achieving better results scholastically, however... this just seems like an "all about the money" scheme and really quite impersonal, which is something the article mentions, in how students would be better off having 'contact' with someone concerned about them achieving rather than some 'hip person' trying to coax them into performing better, most likely because that 'hip person' has a contract or deal with advertisers and makes money off of their image.
This could be argued however that this is an ends justify the means action, but I still believe this is mostly for certain people to line their pockets with more cash, using the guise of helping low-poverty students for profits.
6. Abby said the following at 9:14 PM on Nov 27:
I have never heard of anything more dumb and ineffective in my life. I am starting my student teaching in a high school this January and I have been teaching for most of my life. It is a fact that no student can be motivated long term to learn solely for the purpose of external rewards. Once the reward stops so does the learning! What happens when these kids get older? Their employer is not going to give them tickets to a sports game for learning a skill on the job! Are they kidding!
I also completely agree with the end of the article. Kids are over stimulated as it is. They do not respond to commercials for more than a few minutes. They are bombarded by that stuff every day and it is obviously not changing their lives for the good. Maybe this clever school district that has money enough to provide and administer 15,000 cell phones could spend the money where it will actually be effective - on the teachers in the classrooms! Not all kids have parents who push them to learn but they all have teachers. It is the personal contact, appreciation, encouragement, and time invested in students that are the lasting motivators for learning. Teaching students how to be motivated internally to accomplish their dreams will change them for life - not just the length of a cell phone commercial.
7. Loris said the following at 7:06 AM on Nov 28:
Poor kids are never going to value education unless their parents push it at home. My great-grandparents were poor Dutch immigrants. Neither of my grandparents were educated beyond eight grade because they had to go to work. Then we come to my mom's generation and she and one of her sisters both have master's degrees in education because their parents held up education as the only sure way of bettering one's station.
8. Bethany said the following at 9:07 PM on Nov 28:
I definitely know how this goes. I teach 5th grade in a public school in SC and I have seen the end of my rope with so many of my students. We finally decided to meet about this one girl to see if we could affect some change in her out of control behavior and lack of motivation to learn. After talking with her and discussing what she might like as a privelege for completing the assigned tasks in the appropriate manner her answer shocked me. She said she'd like to stay after school with me and help me any way she could. I think she just wants to be with an adult who isn't a parent. I hate that one of the other commentors is ready to quit after her only 3rd year. I am in my 3rd year as well, and though it is hard I know God has called me to reach my students. Don't lose your vision and continue to inspire the love of education in our little ones!
9. Robert J Espe said the following at 10:29 AM on Nov 29:
I'm student teaching this spring as well. We had a researcher named Alfe Kohn come do a presentation here on his book "Punished By Rewards". I thought it was good stuff. Goes along well with John Gatto's The Underground History of American Education
http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
10. Mrs. B said the following at 8:09 AM on Nov 30:
I like this idea in general, but I agree with the last comment in the article that personal contacts will be more important than pre-recorded messages.
I'm student teaching in an elementary English Second-Language classroom right now, and here motivation is equally important as content. So many students don't have the support at home because their parents work several jobs and just can't be there even if they really do care. So many students have older siblings who are poor examples and who've dropped out or run in bad circles. So many students, even very young ones, already have the idea that the American world is set against them succeeding because they're not from here. It breaks my heart.
My mentor teacher has set an amazing example of how to get students intrinsically motivated. She talks to them one-on-one and lets them know who much she wants to see them succeed and how she knows they have great potential. She goes out of her way to make sure their most basic needs are met when students show up without lunch or don't have a jacket on a cold day. She shows them she CARES. And more than half her ESL students go on to gifted programs, the other half still make good grades, and very rarely does she have any drop-outs.
So many teachers just teach a lesson and think they're doing their job. But students need a reason WHY they are learning what they are, a reason why they need to do well in school and graduate.
11. Rebecca said the following at 6:37 PM on Nov 30:
Bribing kids to get them in school?
I teach in an urban charter high school that boasts a 100% graduation rate (after 10 yrs in existence) and an almost 80% college acceptance/matriculation rate. That is amazing considering that the school population is 95% minorities from low-income neighborhoods. This success is not inexpensive, but it doesn't come via expensive advertising campaigns.
My students (frequently underachievers) work hard because I expect them to do it and praise them when they do. They come to class, and to school, because their mothers will chew them out if they don't, and Ms. M, the disciplinarian will do it again at school. Students get to dress down (from the usual strict uniform) when their parents come to parent/teacher meetings. I call parents at least once a month to tell them the issues (and successes) of the students in my classes. And I am not alone in this. From the administration downward parents hear from those who are responsible for their students 8 hrs every day.
It is hard work to get students to come to school, and to stay. But just today one of my 11th graders told me that he will be the first male in his family to have a high school diploma going back to the "great-great" generation and he plans to also be the first to complete college. He could be gang-banging or tripping out on drugs somewhere, but instead he has raised his reading an entire grade level in 6 weeks and is aiming to be out of remidiation shortly after Christmas.
What makes kids come to school are people who care, high expectations, and follow through. Come to think of it, that doesn't sound much different from what it takes for me to do a good job at work, or for my relationships to grow or to have success as an artist.
Students are just like me... needing less advertisement trying to "sell" me something and more reality that makes a difference in my life.