This is a Guest Post by Rodlie Ortiz. This post is somewhat of a different kind than we typically get here but I thought it was a good principle worth remembering. It’ll be your job to extrapolate that out to technology and it’s use.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of incentives recently. Steven Levitt, the renowned economist from the University of Chicago devotes a chapter to the topic in his book Freakonomics. The chapter is called “What do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?”
So here’s the gist of the issue: People will cheat if the incentive is big enough and the associated risk is small enough.
We’re all used to the idea of students cheating to do better on tests. After all, if you don’t pass some tests, you may not pass the class. Once, when I was in high school geometry, I entered some answers into my TI-89 calculator. I passed the test. Another time in AP English class I carefully…well, let’s move on.
What we’re not so used to hearing, though, is about teachers cheating.
I always looked up to teachers as castles of moral integrity and as civil missionaries. Those that seemingly don’t make a lot of money but still choose to work with hormonal/moody/hyper kids were surely saints on earth. But in the book Levitt details what happened when the state of California introduced $25,000 bonuses “for teachers who produced big test scores.” Many cheated.
More thoughts after the jump:
[Read more…] about The Impact of Incentives And Positive Peer Pressure