I remember reading or watching something that I can no longer find about how US public education creates a false economy for its students by its use of numeric grades which they accumulate throughout their schooling and how these grades are a kind of currency exchanged for being "good students."
I don't know if "false economy" is the correct term though. The wiki says:
a false economy or hallucinated economy is an action that does save money at the beginning but which, over a longer period of time, results in more money being spent or wasted than being saved.
But this is more about economizing as opposed to a broader concept of "fake" economy with a fake currency that incentivizes certain behaviors over others. Perhaps these are short-term over long-term behaviors (like in the wiki above) or that the grades can only measure limited aspects of students performance but are a reification of subjective performance into absolute worth or like Goodhart's law the grades are a key performance indicator (KPI) and don't actually measure what they should be measuring. The topic itself isn't strictly about education and can applied more broadly.
Does anyone know if there is a better term or if I'm off base and completely wrong?
IDK I'd want to problematize the assumption that grades are a currency earned through obedience. That may be true at a young age when grades don't matter, or for specific teachers with bad practice, but is not an accurate reflection of grading writ large. Grades are principally a measure of how much learning a student is able to demonstrate.
Like if you show up every day on time and are very friendly to your AP Physics teacher and only speak when spoken to but can't solve any physics problems you're not going to pass that course. Conversely, if you're late and talk in class but can solve every problem you're going to get an A
The other commenter sent me this essay which is what I think I read like 5 years ago https://archive.is/2023.04.22-195633/https://medium.com/s/story/school-is-an-economy-and-its-currency-is-the-grade-bbb11962858c
Definitely hated reading that but didn't see anything in there that contradicted anything in my comment?
Ultimately my question was about the concept of a token economy that I knew I had read about in an education-related essay and not about the merits the author’s argument.