Listening to the news this morning they were discussing the salary of the Baltimore City superintendent of schools. The CEO of Baltimore City schools earns 479,672 in compensation. 414,000 for a base salary. The test scores for the city school system are just pathetic. A solution was being offered. She should also receive incentives for improved test scoring, something that is not currently a part of the contract. So, what I'm hearing is, you should get paid more if you actually do the job you were hired to do! In my way of looking at things, the incentive for improving test scores is that you get to keep that job. If you fail, as a minimum, to maintain that average you lose your job. That's the incentive for doing your job!
I've been saying the same thing for quite some time now in regard to this matter of parole. That is also backwards in my opinion. If you are sentenced to five years in prison, you behave yourself for that five years, you are then released. You have paid that debt. Forgiveness comes after the debt is satisfied, not before. In this case the debt being five years incarcerated. 1826 days is the debt, nothing more, nothing less. If you don't behave yourself, your stay just got extended! You start at day one all over again. That's the incentive for good behavior.
It is the lowering of expectations that causes these problems. People must be held accountable for their actions, or lack of them. That is why parents should plainly tell their children what the expectations are. Us old people called them, having chores to do. Yes, they were chores because most of us really didn't want to do them. But we did, mostly because of the consequences from not doing them. Doing the chore was the less of two evils! Yeah, I did think my parents were evil at times. I had a job to do, the expectations were made clear to me, and I was aware. Failure to complete the assignment was usually met with one statement, you know better. And yeah, I usually did.
The incentive for doing as I was told was the absence of punishment. It really was as simple as that. If I did more, exceeded those expectations I might receive praise, a reward of some kind, but that wasn't a guarantee, not part of the deal. My incentive was always that I wouldn't be punished and I didn't want to disappoint. Yes, as strange as it may seem, disappointing others has always concerned me, for me it is a lowering of my worth. Today we are concerned with being empowered, well yeah, I was empowered alright by not being punished, and that was something I had control over. Today it's called accountability. Yeah, same thing just in a different light.
The problem today is the lowering of expectations for ourselves, while raising the expectations for the way others will treat us. Something we call entitlement. The reality is you are entitled to what you earn, nothing more than that. If you earn yourself a jail sentence you are entitled to serve that sentence. You may expect me to feel sorry for you, forgive you, or grant you special consideration but that doesn't mean I will. If I hire you to do a job, and you fail to do that job, to my expectations, at the very least I will not hire you again. If you exceed my expectations I may reward you. It's like giving a tip, a gratuity, a gift. It isn't a requirement, not a part of any contract, it's a personal choice. That choice is on both ends of that.
Adjust your expectations to align with the reality, that's my advice. It's all well and good to dream, to have high hopes and expectations but that must be tempered with the truth. Don't expect to be a star if you ain't shining! I expect I will be treated pretty much the way I treat others. That's my expectation with those people that I know. I don't expect that with strangers, as I don't know anything about them. Yeah that is where "profiling" comes into the picture. If it looks like a duck, it is probably a duck. Whether that duck is inherently good or bad is a different question altogether, adjust your expectation accordingly.
The ultimate incentive is eternal life. That is what all religious belief centers around. If we follow the tenets of that religious instruction, behave ourselves, we will ultimately receive that reward. Well, maybe. And it is the maybe part that so many are forgetting about. If I do my job, and I do it well, I may get to keep that job, that's the hope anyway. If I don't do the job well, don't meet the expectations of my employer (or God for that matter) I may not, in fact the reality is, I won't keep that job. So, if it is just keeping your job or obtaining eternal life the incentive remains the same, the fulfillment of your hopes and dreams. It is really up to you.
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