Smarty Card was launched on Tuesday and it is both persuasive and worrying. The well-crafted site is aimed mainly at third to sixth graders, selling fun and colourful learning activities. It adds an element of incentive by rewarding success with points the kids can use to purchase virtual or real merchandise.
This incentive is what makes this new service unsettling.
The service offers educational activities that kids complete on the basis of receiving tangible goods, such as DVDs, Nintendo Wii games or Star Wars toys.
Where is the sense of pride in learning? Surely, it is wrong to teach our children that success translates into acquiring more stuff!!
Redjotter 
If we didn’t live in a society where success does indeed equate into acquiring more stuff, I’d agree with you.
Indeed, I believe this is the wrong message to be sending to the next generation who have to be responsible citizens of our troubled world.
Lauren you are right to question this – extrinsic rewards are shown to depress motivation. Learning should be about curiosity. Never has this been more important than now where constant learning, unlearning and relearning is both exciting and essential….
However… when I was at school back in the 1800s we were “enticed” to learn things because it would get us good jobs which would earn us money which would buy us things… I’m not sure this is new. Maybe it’s more honest?
You have a good point Jonathan – but long-term if you aren’t getting an actual buzz out of learning itself the chances are you won’t do that well. Buzz could include financial reward?
Mmm… Ideally I’d like students to learn for learning’s sake but motivation is often externally provided: we all remember (I hope!) teachers who’s clear excitement about their subject got us similarly excited.
Having a long-term goal in mind, (I always dreamt of having a basement flat in London with a cat for some reason as my idea of having “made it”*) gives you something to aim for when you wonder “why am I doing this?”
That satisfies just about all the classic learning styles in some way.
So “buzz” comes from that long term ambition for self-betterment or improvement.
I think my point is that having a goal other than knowledge in its own right has its place for everyone. My issue with short term rewards like the Smarty Card is that they don’t develop motivation, only desire and consumption to sate that desire (the wrong kind of “buzz”!). And anything that doesn’t have a short term “point” is rejected. Cigarettes work on the same principle – quick buzz followed by withdrawal. Sure, I’d like people to be addicted to learning but not in that way!
*I had the chance to work in London once. I turned it down. Happy living on a harbour overlooking the Scottish countryside now! With cat, of course…
;-)