Reason has posted a good article discussing the merits of New York City Department of Education Ronald G. Fryer's plan to give kids monetary bonuses for both taking and scoring well on academic tests. Some have praised the plan as providing much needed incentives to poor students; others slam it as corrupting the noble nature of learning for the sake of learning.

I'll leave aside the debate over the merits of the program; what bothers me is that we don't do enough to foster this kind of creativity, and that the knee-jerk reaction isn't "let's see what happens!" but rather "this is wrong, let's kill it!".