Purple Haze
Should we really need to be bribed?
By Lauren Bagian

Jan. 8, 2009

As we enter January in a new year, the theme is usually improvement, like I talked about last week. However, these are the months where most students, high school and otherwise, do the worst during their classes. Now, that’s not true for everyone, but many, including myself, see the months from January through Easter as the most dismal and unforgiving months of the year that seem to drag on forever until spring appears out of nowhere and summer is a just a tantalizing 6 or 7 weeks away.

For the past couple of years, students at the high school have been participating in a grade incentive program called G.R.A.S.P., or the Grub and Study Program. Students must raise their grade point average (GPA) a certain number of points on a scale depending on how low their grades are to start with. I do not know the figures exactly, but it pretty much means that the lower your grades are the more you have to raise them and if you already have outstanding grades you have to keep them there. If from the end of the second marking period to the end of the third you have improved your grades by the specified amounts, you get a free lunch that is more than just cafeteria food. In years past it has been Mexican, Chinese or Italian food.

Now don’t misunderstand me, I think that the program is a good idea and has actually created some improvements on the student body’s average grades, but I wish that we didn’t need food or anything else to motivate us to do well in school. What happened to the good ol’ days when everyone wanted to have high grades, or at least their highest possible marks? I don’t think that grades are dropping because the classes are harder or because students aren’t as smart as they used to be, but because they aren’t trying.

This of course is not the case for every student. I know some very hard workers, many of which are not in the advanced placement or accelerated classes either; they are just hard workers and good students who do not need to be motivated with free food. However, if the Grub and Study Program is working, then by all means I believe we should keep it in place because the students who need it will learn more through all their studying, which is the ultimate point. But many students are doing their best and have always been doing their best. They may not be able to raise their grades because they are already working their hardest even though their grades aren’t in the outstanding category. My point by this is to ask if it’s really fair that we are rewarding some students who may have been lazy all along who suddenly start working just for this quarter of the year to get their free lunch and not the students who are already working the hardest that they are able to?

My grief is not with the school, but with some members of the student body. What happened to the years when we were excited to bring home our spelling tests with “WOW” stickers or when we weren’t afraid of parent-teacher conferences? No one should need grub involved to get them to study.