POP a Bribe?

POP: PayOff for Performance
Bribe: • verb dishonestly persuade (someone) to act in one’s favour by paying them or giving other inducement. • noun an inducement offered in an attempt to bribe. (Oxford Dictionary)

This morning I led my freshmen class through a discussion of values and ethics. One of the articles we used for discussion was "A Nation United," reprinted from "Resource Book Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior." The story recounts the escape of Jews from Nazis in Denmark. The night when hundred of boats were ferrying the Jews from Denmark towards Sweden, all German patrol ships were docked for maintenance...quite a bit of money went to 'bribes.' My students discussed bribery as part of a value system and whether it was 'always wrong' or 'sometimes justifiable.'

I just read an article in the WSJ, titled "When Schools Offer Money As a Motivator: More Districts Use Incentives To Reward Top Test Scores; So Far, Results Are Mixed." The first paragraph reads "More and more school districts are banking on improving student performance using cash incentives -- a $1,000 payout for high test scores, for example. But whether they work is hard to say." Schools paying students for doing well, and telling students that they will get paid for doing well....
Has education deteriorated so much that our youths need to be motivated through bribes to learn? I do reward students for doing well, by getting them good internships, scholarships and projects, but I do not offer it as a bribe to induce performance. When the joy of learning is replaced by the jingle of bribery at such an early age, we as a nation need to worry about our future.