RALEIGH - As a dedicated high school math teacher, now retired, I cannot believe what I am about to suggest. Having recently read a summary of the current presidential candidates' proposals on how to improve education, I yawned. Talk about "same ol', same ol'." Look, if it hasn't worked for the last several decades, wouldn't you think someone would finally say, "It doesn't work!" And move on. Why doesn't the "same ol' " work? Let's just look at who we are as a culture. Face it: We are a materialistic culture.

So, very simply, if you want students in a materialistic culture to perform, reward them. Never mind Abraham Maslow's notion of self-actualization: performing well simply for its own sake. Even the overvalued "A" on your report card isn't going to do it. Just like their moms and dads, students want real rewards, and they want them now.

So pay them: real, hard cash.

Over the years I've had the opportunity to teach overseas, the last time on a Fulbright teaching fellowship in Berlin. It was a very different atmosphere.

The most significant difference was that, in Germany, it was the student's responsibility to learn. Here in the USA, it is the teacher's responsibility that the students learn. This is huge.

When I first arrived in Berlin, bright-eyed and excited with lots of innovative teaching techniques filling my briefcase, I was looking forward to a year of professional exchange. I'll show you my ideas, and you show me yours.

What a letdown.

"Who needs new techniques?" they queried as they dusted off the same old lesson plans they had been using for 25 years. Instead, they suggested I head for the local stationery store to buy some of those plastic sleeves that would better protect my own plan sheets and prevent them from getting dog-eared.

Well, I thought, they must be terrible teachers. But they weren't, not if you measure their effectiveness by student performance.

I cannot point to any single strategy that we could borrow from their system to improve ours. It was the entire system. The primary responsibility for student performance and discipline lay with the parent. Because the values of the culture were so different, peer pressure had the effect of encouraging good behavior rather than the opposite.

Education was not merely academic in nature, it was social as well. Every class went on a two-week holiday for the purpose of working together, planning and preparing meals, sharing in activities, dealing with interpersonal relationships.

It is not my intent to laud someone else's system. We have little to gain by this. Instead, my intent is to point out that the method for improving anything in our culture, including education, must be based on the culture we already have. Our culture is based on reward and on who has the most stuff.

During a career day program, I had a guest speaker tell about his job. When one student asked what he was paid, I intervened and said that was a personal question. The student quickly rephrased: "What kind of car do you drive?"

A late model Lexus, was the reply.

"So what kind of car do you drive, Ms. P?"

An old Honda Civic.

"Well, that's easy," she analyzed, "you make more money than Ms. P."

These are the students we are teaching. If you want them to perform, then reward them. Give them gift cards to their favorite stores, movie theaters, celebrity performances, sports events, iPods. If you want to get parents involved, offer coupons for health insurance premiums, car discounts, gasoline gift cards.

We have a masterfully skilled advertising industry in this country. It knows how to persuade us to buy things, to need things. Let's use its expertise and research to woo students into doing exactly what we want them to do as well.

If National Public Radio stations have to lure adults into making tax-deductible, charitable contributions by offering trips to London and Paris, then it doesn't seem right to ask students to be more altruistic and self-actualized than their parents. A's might be nice, but "show me the money" is better Let's face it, we've bred them that way.

Does this horrify you? It does me. But if the shoe fits --

(Gerda Presson lives in Raleigh.)