A dollar richer, grade by grade

Had I played my cards right back when I was in school, I could have been a millionaire today. Or at least had a $100 nest egg.

If only the educational experts that recently suggested parents pay their children for good grades would have spoken up when I was in school, I could have been independently wealthy by graduation. Maybe not from math or science, but I'm thinking I could have broken the bank in English, and scored a few Benjamins in history too.

But no such luck was mine. I went to school during the time it was considered that a good grade earned in a subject was its own payment. And my parents were firm believers in that concept. In fact, my mother's words of encouragmeent for achieving those grades was always, "less than best is failure."

Did I get a low grade in math? Her first question was "did you do your best?" And then she pulled the old standby line out of the air.

Within two sentences, I was putting the spotlight on my own honesty.

Geesh, did I do my best? Had I studied for the test, might I have gotten a good grade? The guilt was mind-boggling.

And it worked every time.

So, when I became a parent of school-aged children, I remembered that "less than best is failure" line and employed it on our children. It worked adequately. Perhaps not as well on them as it worked on me, but it was a different time.

Some of our children's friends and relatives were earning cash for good grades, but I hung tough and assured our children that the knowledge they acquired was payment in itself.

They really didn't buy it.

We considered payment for grades, but that always got a little touchy.

How much was an A worth? And what about a class they'd given their all toward passing, and still walked out with a C? Tough calls.

And my husband and I were never too successful in working payment schedules with our children. Our only other attempt at payoffs involved the tooth fairy, and it didn't go well.

You see, I assumed the tooth fairy still paid out as she did when I was a child. I remembered getting a nickel under my pillow when I hid a tooth there in exchange for payment. The tooth fairy was more than generous to me in doling out a little silver.

However, by the time our children were little, markets had changed.

And sadly, a child down the street from us lost a tooth before our children, and informed them both that the tooth fairy was now leaving a dollar per tooth.

A dollar a tooth? Is that tooth fairy serious? She's breaking the bank with that kind of thinking, yet our children awoke every morning after a tooth had been pulled, one dollar wealthier than the day before.

We folded before the argument began. Admittedly, we were weak.

So my husband and I both knew that this payment for grades concept had disaster written all over it for us.

Yet good fortune smiled on us. The concept of paying for grades that is now being touted doesn't affect us as our children are no longer in school. All arguments are moot when grade payment is mentioned. Or so we thought.

Now we call those dollars earned for good grades, scholarships. And the colleges are teaching parents - even the slow learners like myself - just how that works.