I love that every Weekly Featured Content holds Topics that require one to think. The topics will open your mind to several areas both the good and the bad. It leaves you pondering for a while about it. Today’s topic is something I have related to several times. To me this topic is what has brought me to the point where I am in my academics.
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Giving cash rewards for academic brilliance, most people will only look at the demerits of this topic, but then we fail to realize that those scholarships are also part of monetary rewards to students for their academic brilliance. How are scholarships carried out? It simply requires paying fees for the students which is simply cash. So it is part of the cash rewards.
I am in support of awarding cash rewards for academic brilliance. Yes most students might want to go through exam malpractice and other means just to achieve these cash rewards but then looking at the bright sides, this is more like a motivation and a push to several students. Motivating them to work harder and also study more.
This topic made me go down memory lane. When I was in Primary school, I performed poorly in school, I was one of those students who were known to make terrible grades in school, I couldn’t even spell properly and even had difficulty in reading. I was just in my class 2 then and most times my dad would complain until he was tired of complaining. I was always playing in class. Whenever my dad asked me to read, I told my sister to read it to me ahead so I could cram it, to avoid my dad shouting at me.
Well all that changed, when my dad’s brother who lived outside the country, returned and my dad told him how terrible I did in school. When he came home, he awarded my sister gifts and also cash. Then he said if I could do better the next session in school I would get a certain amount of money. Well, I also needed an award, so I decided to work harder. I started asking my sister to teach me how to read and this time to learn and not cram.
At the end of the term, I did very well. I was super excited when I got my reward from my uncle. My father thought I wouldn’t do well the next term because my uncle had left the country and had no award but he was surprised when I continued with having good grades. For me, that was a motivation and it made me study harder. That is what cash rewards do most time. It makes the students want to do better.
Most students work hard to come out with a distinction because they want scholarships and that is their motivation. These cash rewards are really helpful when we look at it from the bigger picture. On a lighter note, giving gifts to people is more like motivation and appreciation. For instance, we have been to lots of schools’ end-of-session parties where we see that children with good grades are given gifts items and sometimes scholarships, it is something that tells the other students, to work harder.
Everyone loves appreciation in one form or another, and a cash gift is just a reward. Also, cash gifts as a reward for academic brilliance to me is a great way of making a person want to do better next time. We award cash gifts to people who engage in Reality shows and also TV shows just like “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” where you are given money for answering questions.
So why will giving cash gifts for academic brilliance be wrong?
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