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End to tradition of free ice cream for top pupils in Polish town sparks political controversy
(notesfrompoland.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2026
49 points (96.2% liked)
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Students who try harder and do better academically should be rewarded. Small rewards, recognition. A pat on the head and a free ice cream is a good idea.
The thing is that a lot of people do better without trying harder. Or don't do so well despite trying really hard. I like the idea of free ice cream, but I also feel the injustice. Difficult
Edit: I guess my concern boils down to school grades usually not being very representative of how much effort and work a student has put into school. In higher education that changes, but before that things like familial situation, neurodivergency, etc can have a huge influence.
This is depressing though:
I used to believe this is true. That is because I used to get very good grades without barely trying.
However, it was later in life that I learned I was trying very hard in comparison to other students.
Other students studied for at least 1 week before the exam, a couple hours per day. Or so they said (I also realized later most were probably not being honest). Meanwhile I just quickly checked the textbook the day before.
However. What happened in class? I was paying 90+% attention to the teacher. Engaging in class and answering the teacher's questions when he asked them. Meanwhile, the ones that claimed to study so hard would be doodling, or looking at the clock, or talking to whoever was closer to them. Only paying some attention when someone asked "is this going into the exam?" And the teacher answered "yes".
Of course, there may be people that even paying full attention in class, and doing all the homework, and studying many days in advance would perform poorly. But in my experience, the best indicator for success is attention paid in class, which is NOT low effort. You have to try very hard to not be distracted by classmates who are probably having more fun than you.
That is highly dependent on the student and the teacher. Some, especially those on the ADHD spectrum, literally could not pay attention in class if their life depended on it. There are sometimes bad teachers, some who don't like interacting too much with students and only lecture, sometimes there are just incompatible student-teacher pairings that do not vibe well enough, and sometimes it just comes down to learning styles.
I personally am on the ADHD spectrum and I could only bother to follow the class when I was intrisically interested in the topic. But if you want me to learn something I don't care about... Good luck, I'll take the 4 ("passed, but not much more than that").
Also I can't really follow lectures. Let me find out stuff on my own, let me ask questions, bounce around ideas and lead me while I discover knowledge or have me work on an interesting project and I will excell. But tell me something and I will forget about it as soon as you finished the sentence, sometimes earlier.
It is not just an ADHD thing though, I know some neurotypicals who have similar experiences though they never struggled nearly as hard with the downsides of it. While I could not follow uninterestimg subjects or bad lectures for the life of me, the could at least get some out of it and just pass the test without doing too much (not with good grades though) or hammer some of the stuff they didn't care about into their brains by force.
And then there are also socioeconomic factors. Does a student have a calm space to do homework? Do they have supportive parents that help them or get them help for subjects the student struggles with? Do they have a computer to do some research and learning, or do they have one but need to share it with siblings? Do they need to work to help the family stay afloat? Et cetera.
I am happy for you that you had your way of learning and managed well doing so. But your personal experience is not universally applicable. Never was, never will.
Your comment does nothing more than reinforce my claim.
Paying attention in class is actually hard work. Some people cannot do it even if their life depends on it.
Paying attention in class is just the biggest indicator (IMO), but it is still just an indicator. Of course other aspects have an impact too. Having the time, space, and resources to actually be able to do homework at home is huge too. But homework is still at most 2 hours per day (on a particularly homework-heavy day). Kids spend ~8 hours at school.
That's why I believe that what you do in school has the most impact on your school performance. At the end of the day, the place where kids spend most of their time is at school. If they make the most of that time, they will most probably at least pass the class.
My comment does more, you may have just missed something.
I don't argue paying attention in class was never hard. But it isn't generally and not equally hard for everyone. For example, you said you didn't think you were working hard in school, so I'd say participation in class usually wasn't that hard for you as it was for those of your classmates.who were doodling. For me it was sometimes hard and sometimes not at all.
I would however argue that paying attention in class would be the biggest indicator for who's going to get good grades. Getting information is one thing, but to actually learn something, memorize it long term and being able to adapt the knowledge takes practice and repetition which is often done through homework (though the extent varies from teacher to teacher, school to school and system to system).
I had teachers who fully relied on homework for this repetition and practice. You could.be as attentive as you want in class, if you couldn't do homework properly you'd have a hard time passing their exams.
Now for teachers that integrated practice into their lessons, that's another thing, then participation was absolutely important. But how hard that would be again would depend on the student, the type of exercise, etc.