Wrong incentives

Money may motivate individuals to perform more and better but not always and not everywhere.

At times it may be doing quite the opposite of what it is intended for and most often it may be given for the wrong reasons. So one should know the limits of money as a means of motivation – particularly when something has an intrinsic value which money cannot simply buy or where it is difficult to measure the outcome.

Education is one area where monetary incentives, linked either to students’ academic achievement and/or teachers’ performance, can prove counter-productive at least in terms of the avowed role of education in an individual’s personality development and social transformation. But before assessing the debilitating impact of incentivizing education, one should know the limits of any reward linked to performance expressed in quantitative terms.

First the case of a police station. For the purpose of reducing crime rate in a city, the government decided to introduce a reward system which stipulated reward (increased pay and promotion) for the head of police station (in our case SHO) on the basis of FIRs registered. Knowing well how his performance was being rewarded, he started lodging FIRs even for minor crimes. The scheme was later on reversed with rewards given to those who had relatively less number of FIRs registered. This, too, did not work for its inherent flaw of being prone to manipulation.

In a similar case, the performance of hospitals was to be judged on the number of patients fully recovered. To be recognized effective in service delivery and to earn rewards, hospital authorities would admit only those patients who had the highest probability of quick recovery and would return patients with chronic illness during the initial diagnosis. The scheme failed and was reversed after a year but the gaming of the system continued.

The problem of achievement/performance-based incentives is even more problematic and tricky in education. The KP government gives cash awards to twenty position-holders of every board in the SSC and FSC exams besides giving bonuses to teachers of best-performing schools (measured in terms of the number of students passed with good grades). Apparently, it is a good initiative of the government as it ends up motivating students and teachers to work more and perform better. However, it has at least two harmful effects on the character of education.

One, it promotes a culture of rote learning and cheating. Teachers encourage students to memorize notes and use window-dressing techniques to earn good grades. Examination halls are flooded with cheating material with no check on students from the invigilating staff. The school authorities in most cases create enabling conditions (facilitating unfair means) for students to take maximum benefit of the available time; this they do given their own incentives linked to their students’ achievement.

Two, placing a price tag on education excellence kills the very spirit and purpose of education. Education has an intrinsic worth. Life is more spiritual or metaphysical than material and education is one’s preparation for a decent and noble living. Education can hardly be expressed in monetary terms. Students who are used to financial incentives for everything they do will eventually forgo civic virtues such as gratitude, tolerance, perseverance, and benevolence when they do not see any economic return.

Instead of using financial rewards, the best and more potent way of improving the quality of educati­on and enhancing the students’ retention is to promote the pursuit of education for its own sake. Individuals and nations who have done any remarkable work in the past (eg the Greeks) followed a different strategy for education from what we have today. All their personal interactions, dialogues, and discussions were aimed at the pursuit of truth (the essence of education).

This attitude needs to be revived in students and teachers for education to have any worthwhile impact on individuals and the society we live in.

The writer teaches at SZABIST, Islamabad.

Email: dr.zeb@szabist-isb.edu.pk