In a well-written essay, develop a position on the ethics of offering incentives for charitable acts. Support your position with evidence from your reading, observation, and/or experience.
The purpose of a charity is to give aid to people in need. The Red Cross gives supplies to disaster victims, and any other international crisis that leaves people without supplies. In school, when teachers offer extra credit as an incentive, many students are driven to bring donations. While some people may believe that incentives lessen the value of giving, I disagree. I believe that it is acceptable for teacher to give bonus points to students who make donations.
Niccolo Machiavelli famously wrote that “the end justifies the means.” If a charity recieves more donations because the students were motivated to give, then what is the harm? Not only was the charity helped, but the students were helped as well. With the extra donations, more people can be helped, which makes the charity even better. While I can see that some parents might view the incentives as being wrong, I would advise them to look at the big picture. If the students and the charity are both helped by the incentives, I don’t see how it could be bad.
When a school has a fundraiser for a charitable organization and a teacher offers bonus points, they only offer a few. In my experience, the teacher only offers enough extra credit to boost the letter grade of a small quiz or homework assignment. Many parents argue that their child is disadvantaged because they do not participate in the fundraiser. However, the incentives offered usually do not affect the final averages of students who do donate.
As always, parents reserve the right to prevent their child from recieving bonus points. If a parent feels that an incentive to donate would destroy the lesson that giving should be selfless, then they should contact the school, or teacher specifically, and explain that they do not want their child to recieve a bonus. In doing so, they get their child away from the incentive, but can still help people in need.
Overall, I see no problems with offering incentives forstudents to donate to charity. When not only the needy people are aided, but also the student, the incentives are doing more good than harm.
Niccolo Machiavelli famously wrote that “the end justifies the means.” If a charity recieves more donations because the students were motivated to give, then what is the harm? Not only was the charity helped, but the students were helped as well. With the extra donations, more people can be helped, which makes the charity even better. While I can see that some parents might view the incentives as being wrong, I would advise them to look at the big picture. If the students and the charity are both helped by the incentives, I don’t see how it could be bad.
When a school has a fundraiser for a charitable organization and a teacher offers bonus points, they only offer a few. In my experience, the teacher only offers enough extra credit to boost the letter grade of a small quiz or homework assignment. Many parents argue that their child is disadvantaged because they do not participate in the fundraiser. However, the incentives offered usually do not affect the final averages of students who do donate.
As always, parents reserve the right to prevent their child from recieving bonus points. If a parent feels that an incentive to donate would destroy the lesson that giving should be selfless, then they should contact the school, or teacher specifically, and explain that they do not want their child to recieve a bonus. In doing so, they get their child away from the incentive, but can still help people in need.
Overall, I see no problems with offering incentives forstudents to donate to charity. When not only the needy people are aided, but also the student, the incentives are doing more good than harm.