Here is my suggestion: If the work required of students is so hard and with "no payoff" as you say. Let's let the kids stop going to school. That costs the least amount of money at all. If it's government-enforced slavery, then let's stop allowing the government to "enslave" our kids. Pull them out, let them play since they so badly want to, and let the future take care of itself.

I totally agree! To compare school to slavery is absurd. Up into the 1920s, many children labored in factories and were not permitted to go to school. Parents could opt out and force their kids to earn money for the family by working on the farms. Today Amish families still pull their kids out of school after 8th grade to help on the family farm. School is a PRIVILEGE!!!! It is a free education for a better life. It is *hardly* slavery!!! No wonder your kids are flunking if they don't get paid.

Exactly! This is why we need to pick and choose which "money pot" our taxes go into. Not for EVERYTHING, like roads and city maintenence that just about everyone needs. But in cases like this, yes we should have some say. Especially because it is NOT NECESSARY to pay kids for their school performance. Just as it is NOT NECESSARY to pay college kids for their school performance. That should be up to the parents. It should not be forced onto tax payers.

I work AND go to school. My work pays for my own education but I also get good grades. Can college students collect payment as well? Instead of paying for the education? I could use that money!

Go out into your backyard and pick some more money off of that money tree of yours. I'm afraid by doing this we won't be teaching our children how to till the soil and plant their own money trees in their own backyards. And of course your kids won't be paying for my retirement as we'll need to borrow more money from China in order to pay them to get A's so they'll need to repay that "loan".

Do adults do their jobs because "they are supposed to" or "out of the kindness of their own hearts." What child goes to shool "out of the kindness of their own hearts"???? Are you nuts??? When I was a kid I went to school because my parents -who paid for my food and shelter- also whooped my butt if I didn't. Being lazy was NOT an option! Loafing around the house and refusing to lift a finger was NOT an option! That's the only reason I am employed today when most in the nation are not. School is the child's "job" and his reward is he gets to eat and sleep and have clothes and anything else his parents think he has earned. Just like our "reward" for going to work! If you think your kids need a paycheck, then YOU pay it! Not me!

I am currently working for my OWN retirement, thank you, and Medicaid is just something else I pay into that others benefit from, not me. Sure, I agree: let's get rid of medicaid, social security, and anything else we won't benefit from ourselves. I know there won't be any retirement check waiting for me, no matter how many years I've already paid into that system. Have your kids paid into ANY of that yet? The answer is no.

Yes! Except I thought that investment was already being made when I as a childless taxpayer was paying for your children's teachers, their school supplies at schools, and their textbooks, not to mention the school building itself. Not so sure I want to "invest" in the lesson that no kid should lift a finger for his own future betterment unless their is immediate payment for it now. The saying "you don't get something for nothing" will definitely be true for these bribed kids! Not true for the taxpayers paying for their bribes though.