Grades are often based on the student’s abilities to obey unquestioningly rather than on knowledge of the subject(s) being taught. While an idea such as this may incentivize becoming a sheep, it won’t help them learn a damn thing. So no, I don’t think it’d work, except for those people incapable of learning.
@stanleybmanly There are 2 types of obsessive gamers, actually. Those like @talljasperman will have to be bribed to even show up to school, whereas those like me often already know at least as much as the teacher. The difference is that one of us can excel at certain types of games; specifically, those that involve any sort of strategy or skill instead of being purely reflex based. For instance, if you want to know why the T49 is so dangerous in World of Tanks, especially with a fully-trained crew:
camoFactor = baseCamo * (0.00375 * camoSkill + 0.5) * camoAtShot + camoPattern + camoNet + environmentCamo
(You do remember your order of mathematical operations, right?)
However, the main thing there is that I actually had incentive to do well; incentive that didn’t involve bribery. I like doing cool things. I like knowing how to do cool things myself instead of having to watch more learned people do cool things and just watching in awe. I also like excelling at what I do, or at least doing considerably better than a mere “also ran”.
So while the D-students are sitting there merely playing Halo only half-competently, I am racking up wins in my T49, crafting uber-gear in my favorite MMORPG, saving hundreds of dollars by doing my own car repairs, and using my math/computer skills to cut huge pieces of metal to tolerances of +/-0.005” despite the tendency of metal to expand/contract due to temperature changes throughout the day…. and earning good money doing it.
In other words, I did well in school because I wanted to do well in everything I did. Success is more fun than just being lazy.