It's a changed world

I'm sure that most people of my generation would be amazed to learn that some schools are now rewarding kids for attending school. For example, Chelsea High pays kids $25 for each quarter of perfect attendance. A 9-year-old in Hartford, a city that has had many hard years, won $10,000 in a raffle for kids with perfect attendance. An evening school student in Texas won a new truck.

Part of the reason behind these incentives is money for the school districts. Some states give more money to schools with better average attendance rates. But a larger part seems to be an ethos that says people only doing things for money. That's an ethos I don't accept.

I know many of the kids in Chelsea and other poor cities don't live in two-parent families, but it seems to me that meeting one's basic obligations (e.g., going to school every day) should be something that is taught to everybody, no matter how many parents they have,