Freakonomics: School Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers - Incentives to Cheat - Prof. M. Richards, Papers of Grammar and Composition

Download Freakonomics: School Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers - Incentives to Cheat - Prof. M. Richards and more Papers Grammar and Composition in PDF only on Docsity! English 104 27 October 2008 Critical Response Journal # 4 In Freakonomics the very first chapter is called “What do school teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?”(15) Dubner and Levitt claim that both of the two have some sort of incentive resulting in cheating. A schoolteacher cheating is a very bold and uncommon statement to make, thus it is the last thing that one would believe is the similarity. The similarity is not unmasked until later in the chapter, after they give a few examples of what an incentive can look like. The chapter begins describing a scenario where a small price was made for picking children up late from day-care. They found that more parents actually pick up their kids up late with this new fine in effect. The incentive is simply buying time to arrive whenever is best for the parent without having to feel bad about it because of paying the fee. In any case, if one can benefit from the situation at hand there lays the incentive to do so. This scenario puts everyone reading on the same page in regards to the definition of an incentive before actually getting into what matters. The same thing goes for the example they give about crimes incentives due to statistics of punishments. This is smart on Dubner and Levitt’s behalf because it makes their point later in the chapter more obvious. A reader that takes in what they just read will come to the right answer when asked, “Who cheats?”(20) With incentives, just about everyone cheats no matter what the cause and this is already obvious again because of the examples prior. This was intentionally done to set the stage for main question to be brought up. “If everyone cheats, what about your 3rd grade teacher?”(21) By this point the reader in informed enough to take this claim seriously. The first question that comes 2 to mind is, “Why would these teachers do this?” Thus, the argument starts with talking about what types of incentives may a teacher encounter such as, “Bonuses of $25,000 for teachers who produced big test-score gains.”(23) That sounds like a pretty big incentive for a teacher that is only making $40,000 average a year. Now that the cats out of the bag, Levitt and Dubner do a good job in backing up there claim with plenty of creditable facts. The Chicago Public School System’s situation is all the proof that is needed to prove their point. As the chapter continues the information given shows what a teacher cheating might look like. (25-27) After many examples of how a teacher could easily change five questions to make the class as a whole look better one sees that it wouldn’t be hard to do this at all. Now that Dubner and Levitt have proven that schoolteachers are in fact cheaters, what do they have in common with sumo wrestlers? This is also cheating believe it or not. Though the two have cheating in common, this is hardly the point of comparison. Incentives combine the two with teachers changing scores to make them look better, and sumo wrestlers losing matches on purpose because it doesn’t hurt their rate but helps their opponents. Like the first, this claim is backed up with evidence such as stats and history. The Chicago schoolteachers can relate to the twenty-nine out of eighty wrestlers that were identified as “known to be corrupt.”(40) After the answer to the first question is decided, Levitt and Dubner drop the bomb. “So if sumo wrestlers, schoolteachers, and day-care parents all cheat, are we to assume that mankind in innately and universally corrupt?”(41) After reading the argument at hand, being asked that question makes the reader think much more in depth after closing the book. This is what the chapter as a whole is meant to do, though it is made up into various parts. All