the anti-alfie

i asked chana how much she would like to earn (she's been asking for ways to earn money anyway) to do a massive chazara of parshas noach when we finish. ie going through every pasuk and translating it. i had in my head 10 dollars, and chana said 20, and i said deal. her eyes rounded. really?

it is yet to be seen if it will actually motivate her sufficiently. not to mention that we're only about halfway through noach (but the last bit is a lot of genealogy).

i would like to state for the record that i agree with alfie that a reward means to the child that the money is more valuable than the skills of translating chumash. i agree that ideally a teacher would make learning skills so interesting that the child wouldn't need the motivation of rewards.

i am taking an "easier" way out. alfie maintains that this will end up with the child having a more negative attitute (acc to his research, rewards de-motivate in the long term).

it is true that the child may be demotivated to read and translate simply for the sake of reading and translating. reading and translating IS difficult and painful and can be boring. i'll have to hope that the glory of the ideas of torah will provide motivation, and she'll call on the skills i bribed and pushed for.

and she'll realize that when she was 9, she valued money more than skills. but her parents valued torah so much that they were willing to pay her to have the building blocks.