#prize boxes

Maybe it was this way when I went to school.  I don't remember. But every 'school' my daughter has gone to/attends (day care, elementary school, Sunday school) uses the trick of the "prize box."

One would be hard pressed these days to find a school that doesn't utilize a Reward and Punishment system. 

Imagine my surprise last night when I pick up my daughter from Sunday school, a place to learn about Jesus and being kind...wait a minute...is he the ultimate prize box?...let's not go there right now... and she tells me she "can't wait until next week since she'll have 5 stickers for bringing her folder each week and she'll be able to go to the prize box and it's a much better prize box than the one at her [regular] school because it has better prizes."

A visit to her day care/elementary school prize boxes was/is predicated on her behavior that particular week.  Good behavior all week=visit to a box filled with worthless, trivial plastic crap on Friday.  One day of bad behavior (step out of line..., step on a crack..., etc.) and, in the vein of the Soup Nazi, "No prize box for you!" 

What is school's fascination with the prize box?  By the time the kids get to me as 9th graders, they are so conditioned to expect a prize box that some are startled to find there is no such thing in high school...at lest not a 'prize box' filled with worthless, trivial plastic crap.

Instead, in high school, we reward them with permission to go to formal dances or laptops or gift cards if they've been to all classes on-time for a month. Students who drive can get discounted parking passes for having good (C average) grades.  And, of course, we give grades. Don't let's go there right now.